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This article explores the cultural politics of civic pride through Hull's year as UK City of Culture (UKCoC) in 2017. It unpicks some of the socio-political meanings and values of civic pride in Hull and critiques the ways in which pride, as an indicator of identity and belonging, was mobilised by UKCoC organisers, funders and city leaders. It argues for more nuanced and critical approaches to the consideration and evaluation of pride through cultural mega events (CMEs) that can take account of pride's multiple forms, meanings and temporalities.

A multidimensional, mixed methods approach is taken, incorporating the critical analysis of Hull2017 promotional materials and events and original interviews with a range of stakeholders.

The desire for socio-economic change and renewed identity has dominated Hull's post-industrial sense of self and is often expressed through the language of pride. This article argues that UKCoC organisers, cognisant of this, crafted and tightly controlled a singular pride narrative to create the feeling of change and legitimise the entrepreneurial re-branding of the city. At the same time, UKCoC organisers overlooked the opportunity to engage with and potentially reactivate the political culture of Hull, which like other “left behind” or “structurally disadvantaged” places, is becoming increasingly anti-political.

Through the case study of a relatively unresearched and under-represented city, this paper contributes to cultural policy literatures concerned with critically assessing the benefits and shortcomings of Cultural Mega Events and to a more specific field concerning Cities of Culture and the political cultures of their host cities. This paper also contributes to an emerging literature on the centrality of pride through the UK's post-Brexit Levelling Up agenda, suggesting that pride in place is becoming figured as a “universal theme” of the neoliberal city script.

This study explored whether the creation of an illustrated picturebook could explain the terms and practicalities of participatory, multi-method qualitative research to children aged four to eight years and their parents/carers, creating conditions to seek agreement to their participation, by using an age-appropriate design whilst adhering to ethical guidelines. The purpose of this paper is to explore how this was done addressing these issues.

Drawing on the researcher's previous professional experience working in children's publishing and taking an innovative and collaborative approach to giving information to child and parent/carer co-researchers, the researcher and an illustrator created a picturebook both as an eBook and a paperback book to recruit and explain research and co-researchers’ roles to young children and their parents/carers.

The picturebook successfully recruited 30 children and their parents/carers. Other children expressed their wish not to participate. These findings suggest that greater consideration should be given to the ways information is given to potential research participants, particularly the visual, material and paratextual elements of the information sheets and consent forms routinely used in research.

This paper offers insight into the publishing practicalities of creating innovative ways of giving information about research participation to children and parents/carers and how these ways might foster rich data collection.