A “life changing” year: intangible legacies of the Hull City of Culture volunteer programme

PurposeThe Hull City of Culture 2017 volunteer programme is widely celebrated and remains a key legacy of the designation. A 2019 master's project found that volunteers experienced a multitude of intangible personal benefits from their time volunteering with the programme. Taking an interpretivist stance, this article aims to capture these sentiments; what volunteering has meant to the volunteers themselves and what legacy it has left them, both as individuals and as residents of the city.Design/methodology/approachTo investigate legacy over a longer period, the original qualitative research was supplemented with a similar number of interviews taken in 2021.FindingsThe 2019 focus groups were largely positive towards Hull City of Culture, and the effect it had on the volunteers and the city of Hull overall. Participants highlighted various intangible benefits and legacies, namely, personal well-being, perceptions of the city and a sense of community. The world in which the 2021 interviews took place is almost inconceivably different, yet the volunteers' feelings about their time with Hull City of Culture and its later iterations are remarkably similar to the earlier findings. Despite the changing circumstances, they too expressed positivity about the programme and its effect on them individually, and the city more widely.Originality/valueThe continued experience of intangible benefits from volunteering with the programme demonstrates an important legacy of Hull City of Culture 2017.