Coventry City of Culture: Drill track for festival launch

Coolie is credited with being responsible for the birth of Coventry's current vibrant rap scene

The words of novelist George Eliot will be mixed into a new drill track to mark the launch of Coventry's City of Culture festival.

The track, by producer Coolie, is featured in the film Timeless Words Made New, using the words of the writer with the cityscape as a backdrop.

It will be broadcast on Saturday to mark the start of the 12-month event.

The year will be a celebration of music, dance, theatre, art and culture, said organisers.

Coventry City of Culture Trust said the rap artist would lead viewers on a personal tour around the city "he feels is often overlooked".

George Eliot - born Mary Ann Evans - used a pen name to ensure her work was taken seriously

The words of the Victorian novelist have been projected onto iconic buildings while well-known people from the city speak them.

"It's so exciting, the city has been waiting for this moment for three years," Chenine Bhathena, creative director of City of Culture Trust, said.

While it was "not possible to [launch the festival] in the way we'd want", she said the film was "the re-start of our cultural lives" and was "really powerful".

The quotes were chosen for their relevance after a year where people and communities had been challenged and young people "particularly hard hit", the trust said.

Culture minister Caroline Dineage said the year-long festival was "important for the whole of the country", and that Saturday's opening event would be "really fun".

The festival has been hindered and delayed by the pandemic

Coolie, known for his work with another city artist, Jay 1, said the words of Eliot were "as relevant today as they were back when she was writing in Victorian England".

The sometimes dark and gritty beats of drill have been seen by some as a link to criminal behaviour, but Coolie said he had used the novelist's quotes about "music, poetry, determination and resilience".

Other contributors to the piece include Pauline Black of The Selecter, author Lee Childs, film director Debbie Isitt and Ann Lucas the lord mayor of Coventry.

"I got so many members of the Coventry community saying these quotes and sending them to me on voice notes," said Coolie.

The result was a film with an "anthemic and emotional feel to it - almost orchestral" he said, which has been merged with the drill genre.

On his unusual collaboration with the writer he said it had been an "amazing opportunity to collaborate with someone from our past - such a huge figure - especially for everything she stands for - for female empowerment in a time of the major patriarchy.

"It was a brilliant thing to do."

The film will go live at 20:21 BST and can be seen on the City of Culture website.

The festival has been hindered and delayed by the pandemic, with the trust coordinating a "flexible" programme.

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The launch of the UK City of Culture year has been delayed because of the pandemic

In April, the City of Culture trust was awarded £3.5m from the government to support their digital offering to ensure people could enjoy the festival from home in a Covid-safe way.

It also announced a further £1.3m in funding from the National Lottery which will be used to take the programme to "neighbourhoods and streets right across the city".

Although the festival officially begins on Saturday, its signature launch 'Coventry Moves', had to be pushed back three weeks to 5 June.

Street art is already being installed in the city and Ms Bhathena said there was "a real buzz" ahead of Saturday's launch.