Barnsley rebranded UK’s first ‘tech town’ as US giants join AI push

Barnsley has struggled with unemployment and deprivation since the coal pits closed. Photograph: Daniel Harvey Gonzalez/In Pictures/Getty Images

In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”.

The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK.