About Nottingham

Nottingham, in the heart of the East Midlands, has a population of around 311,000 and is one of the youngest cities in the UK, with over 50% of the population under 30. It's 30 miles (48km) south of Sheffield and 30 miles (48km) north of Leicester.

The wider metropolitan area of Nottingham/Derby has a population of around 1,543,000 and is the seventh largest in the UK with a GDP of over 50.9 billion. Find out more about the area's Metropolitan Strategy for growth

In 2015, Nottingham was named a UNESCO City of Literature, joining Norwich, Edinburgh, Dublin, Krakow, Reykjavik, Heidelberg, Granada, Dunedin, Prague, Iowa City and Melbourne, as one of only a handful in the world. The title reflects Nottingham's literary heritage, with literary icons like Lord Bryron, DH Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe having links to the city.

Nottingham has long been the home of sport (it was officially named as the 'Home of English Sport' in 2015) and is the UK's first City of Football. It's home to two football clubs, Nottingham Forest and Notts County, as well as the National Ice Centre, Holme Pierrepoint National Water Sports Centre, Trent Bridge international cricket ground, ice hockey team, Nottingham Panthers, and events like the Aegon Open Nottingham.

Nottingham is home to two universities, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, attended by over 60,000 students, as well as exciting educational institutions such as Nottingham College and the Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies. This is great news for businesses, who benefit from exciting partnerships and a wealth of new talent.

Nottingham is famed for its links to the legend of Robin Hood as well as its lace-making heritage, 11th century Nottingham Castle and famous names like Raleigh bikes and Boots. It was granted its city charter in 1897 as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. But the city has so much more to offer than Robin Hood and has long been home to creativity and entrepreneurship.

Nottingham has a reputation for producing creative talent including fashion designer, Paul Smith; musician, Jake Bugg; actors Vicky Mclure and Samantha Morton; director Shane Meadows; filmmaker, Jeanie Finlay and artists Wolfgang Buttress and Edmund de Waal. Together with brilliant creative institutions and venues including Broadway, Nottingham Contemporary, National Videogame Arcade, Galleries of Justice, Rock City, Rough Trade and the Motorpoint Arena.

Nottingham is famous for shopping too, with a huge variety of independent shops, cafes, restaurants and bars, to take you from daytime into night as well as markets, night markets, pop-ups and festivals. Find out more in this alternative guide to Nottingham from The Guardian

The city is well-served by public transport, including trams, buses, Nottingham train station and East Midlands Airport just 10 miles away.

In the days of the British Empire, the Lace Market was the centre of the world's lace industry; famous Victorian architect Watson Fothergill designed many buildings here; and throughout the Industrial Revolution, pioneering industrialists like Calverton's William Lee, the inventor of the knitting frame, and mill owner Richard Arkwright radically developed the way people lived and worked.

Nottingham has always been a place for scientific and technological innovation too, with Ibuprofen discovered in the buildings that are now home to BioCity, the UK's largest bioscience incubation centre.

Nottingham's contemporary businesses are drawing on the city's creative legacy to reinvent enterprise, innovation and manufacturing for the 21st century, helping to shape the future of Nottingham. The Creative Quarter initiative has been a big part of that, winning a prestigious European Enterprise Promotion Award for Improving the Business Environment in 2015.

Not surprisingly, Nottingham is an attractive tourist destination, with visitors spending an average of £535 million a year in the city and £1.556 million in the county as a whole. The Creative Quarter initiative supports this and has brought £4.2 million in visitor spend into the city, by hosting and supporting events in the Creative Quarter area.