'You're only here for the culture!' Is Hull getting its buzz back?

The port city was late to the party when it came to embracing urban regeneration. But, as next year's UK City of Culture, it's hoping to ride a wave of artistic and economic investment to compete with its noisy northern neighbours

'Change is happening!" says the message stencilled, in bright green, on a peeling wall just behind Hull's new marina. And if that sounds a little wistful, given that right now it's overlooking an empty car park surrounded by wire fencing, it has the underlying ring of truth.

It's two decades since I was last in Hull, frozen in my memory as one long Saturday night - short skirts, hot chips, scuffles in taxi queues, excitement edged with nerves. Back then I was working just over the Humber Bridge in Grimsby, and Hull was the bright light across the water, home of gigs and cavernous nightclubs and all the exotic thrills small towns lack. Those clubs are now mostly gone, but the tingling anticipation in the air is back. A city long buffeted by the wrong kinds of change now stands on the verge of potential renaissance; for Hull is next year's official UK City of Culture, beneficiary of a public art project aiming to do here what similar European programmes did for Liverpool in 2008 and Glasgow in 1990.

Related: Hull: 10 reasons to visit the UK city of culture 2017