In the next few days we will hear which one of four short-listed bidder will be the chosen UK City of Culture for 2013. There is to be one every four years, but as the first this one will set the early standard. The idea was the brainchild of the TV producer Phil Redmond who was the creative director of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, and the aim was to build on the 2008 “which had significant social and economic benefits for the area”, the culture department said in launching the scheme last year. “In deciding on the four cities recommended - Derry/Londonderry, Birmingham, Norwich, and Sheffield – the panel was influenced by the expected step change each city was asked to envisage, if they gained the title and subsequent media spotlight”. Here is what each has too offer.

NORWICH
Norwich’s bid is a bold one, which they are calling the “whole city experiment”. Sitting as it does at the far corner of East Anglia, it has always suffered from being perceived as slightly apart from the rest of the country, but it has a sound cultural base.

The annual Norfolk and Norwich Festival has become a national event and will play a key part in 2013. There also five theatres, including the Theatre Royal the Playhouse and an open air theatre. At the University of East Anglia it has the Sainsbury Centre, the internationally recognised contemporary art gallery. The Castle Museum, which used to suffer badly from lack of repair and resources, has been restored and relaunched as a major museum and gallery with which the Tate has an association for travelling exhibitions. Although there is no major concert hall of international standard, St Andrew’s Hall has served well with a wonderful acoustic that attracts orchestras such as he London Symphony regularly. And it has the Writers’ Centre, a literary initiative that is spear-heading Norwich’s bid to become a Unesco City of Literature.

But Norwich’s is a “tale of two cities”, according to the bid. The centre looks prosperous and refined, but outlying are poor areas with a high level of deprivation. A third of Norwich’s children are living in households dependent on state benefit of one sort or another.

So the bid, which is supported by Labour leadership contender Ed Balls, is to “use culture to change the whole city, for all of its citizens”.

BIRMINGHAM
The city has long boasted of its “second city” status, and with its world class orchestra and concert hall, museums and galleries, ballet and dance companies and theatres such was a close call to be the European Capital of Culture two years ago.

But at the centre of celebrations in 2013 will be the opening of the new Library of Birmingham, pictured, the largest public sector cultural project in Britain which is rising on Centenary Square next to the Birmingham Rep theatre. In addition, there will be a brand new autumn festival and a special exhibition of the extraordinary Anglo Saxon Hoard at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery along with A City in the Making, a new history gallery that will tell the story of Birmingham and its people.

It is the youngest city in Europe, in terms of the average age of its inhabitants, and there will be a whole programme of activity designed, led and curated by Birmingham’s young people. There is already a group of children, young people and their families from across the city developing the programme.

Also, a large part of the bid has been MAC, the Midlands Arts Centre, which opened on May 1 after a £15m expansion and refurbishment. It had been one of the first in a wave of arts centres in the 1960s and has now, says its director Dorothy Wilson, been transformed for a new generation with the biggest display of contemporary art in the West Midlands.

DERRY~LONDONDERRY
The long-awaited publication of the Saville Report into Bloody Sunday, the day in 1972 when 13 young civil rights protestors were shot dead by soldiers, was a watershed for the Derry~Londonderry because it absolved the protestors and victims of any criminal blame and allowed the city to move on at last. Northern Ireland as a whole had agreed that Derry should be the bid city rather than, for instance, Belfast, and the whole province is behind it.

A key element of the bid, the presentation team for which included Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, is the transformation of Ebrington Barracks, once the headquarters for British soldiers in the region, into an arts centre. The former parade ground is to become a large performance space for pubic events, larger than Trafalgar Square, and a contemporary art gallery is to be created out of the former headquarters building, the Clocktower. The square will also be surrounded by museums, artists’ studios, galleries, cafes and restaurants to create an artistic quarter. A giant new piece of public sculpture has been commissioned by the city Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier for the site at a cost of £800,0000.

The area in which Ebrington stands, Waterside, has been historically cut off from the walled city by the river Foyle, but is being linked by a new pedestrian bridge being built with European money, the Peace Bridge.

The bid presentation included a film, Voices , in which ordinary Derry people speak about what the arts in their city mean to them. “The great strength of the Derry-Londonderry bid” said temporary director of development Oonagh McGillion “has been the people of the city, and it’s the fact that it is the people of the city who deliver the message in the film that makes it so moving”.

SHEFFIELD
Sheffield is representing the north with its bid, and has the support of, among others, Manchester City Council, the Peak District National Park, Leeds City Council, neighbouring South Yorkshire boroughs and the region’s tourism agency.

The bid is about the people, communities, businesses and organisations in the city creating, making and participating in the 2013 programme. “We know our programme can cut it with the best internationally and we will invite the rest of the world to experience it here with us in Sheffield” the bid declares.

Sheffield already has an admired track record for delivering major events and boasts the largest theatres complex outside of London. The Made in Sheffield brand is globally recognised and its central role in the bid has been the platform for the city and the region to accelerate the selling of the city’s contemporary image and wider tourism offer.

Sheffield will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of stainless steel in 2013 but also sits at the heart of the most digitally connected region in the UK. The £90 million Digital Region initiative will bring the first major deployment of super fast broadband in the UK to our city, providing endless possibilities for our 2013 programme and the city’s digital future.

And, like the orthers, it has recruited celebrity support, in this case Michael Palin. “Someone once noted that all the Monty Python team were provincials” he said “and I think that coming from Sheffield gave me a fresh and unconventional outlook on life which has helped me in my creative work and been with me ever since”.