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Urban anxieties and creative tensions in the European Capital of Culture 2005: ‘It couldn’t just be about Cork, like’

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Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) has increasingly come to be viewed by host cities as a tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms. In recent years this has resulted in a predictable set of conflicts over cultural ownership, social inclusion and economics/arts dichotomies. In this paper, the author argues that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself, in that it has multiple objectives which are not mutually reinforcing and often contradictory. Based on primary research undertaken in Cork between 2005 and 2008, this paper explores how the policy framework of the event created dissonances within the cultural sector. It then uses the ambivalent outcomes of Cork 2005 as a starting point to address some of the ways in which the ECOC could be mobilised as a cultural policy designed to encourage creative dialogue through dissent.
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Urban anxieties and creative tensions
in the European Capital of Culture
2005: ‘It couldn’t just be about Cork,
like’
Cian O’Callaghan a
a National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, Iontas
Building, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth Co. Kildare, Ireland
Available online: 21 Jun 2011
To cite this article: Cian O’Callaghan (2012): Urban anxieties and creative tensions in the European
Capital of Culture 2005: ‘It couldn’t just be about Cork, like’, International Journal of Cultural
Policy, 18:2, 185-204
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International Journal of Cultural Policy
ISSN 1028-6632 print/ISSN 1477-2833 online
© 201 Taylor & Francis
Urban anxieties and creative tensions in the European Capital of
Culture 2005: ‘It couldn’t just be about Cork, like’
Cian O’Callaghan*
National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, Iontas Building, NUI Maynooth,
Maynooth Co. Kildare, Ireland
Taylor and FrancisGCUL_A_567331.sgm10.1080/10286632.2011.567331International Journal of Cultural Policy1028-6632 (print)/1477-2833 (online)Article2011Taylor & Francis0000000002011Dr CianO’Callaghancian.ocallaghan@nuim.ie
Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the
European Capital of Culture (ECOC) has increasingly come to be viewed by host
cities as a tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and
economic terms. In recent years this has resulted in a predictable set of conflicts
over cultural ownership, social inclusion and economics/arts dichotomies. In this
paper, the author argues that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself, in
that it has multiple objectives which are not mutually reinforcing and often
contradictory. Based on primary research undertaken in Cork between 2005 and
2008, this paper explores how the policy framework of the event created
dissonances within the cultural sector. It then uses the ambivalent outcomes of
Cork 2005 as a starting point to address some of the ways in which the ECOC
could be mobilised as a cultural policy designed to encourage creative dialogue
through dissent.
Keywords: European Capital of Culture; cultural policy; urban regeneration;
Ireland; Cork city
Introduction
In October 2004, in the run-up to its year as European Capital of Culture (ECOC) in
2005, Dr Franco Bianchini gave a lecture in Cork city, Ireland on ‘globalisation, the
festival, culture and the city’. The talk was part of the Creating a Cultural City series
involving prominent figures in urban planning and cultural policy, and organised by
Cork City Council (CCC) Arts Office. This was an attempt by CCC to grapple with
questions of how to manage and coordinate the arts as part of a culture-led regenera-
tion approach. These questions had become increasingly contentious as the Cork 2005
event approached. During the lecture one of the arts practitioners present launched into
an ‘impromptu’ protest of what he saw as Cork 2005’s top-down inscription of culture,
lack of effective consultation, and vast amounts of money waster on bureaucracy. The
tirade lasted a few minutes, as Dr Bianchini was left awkwardly lingering at the
podium, possibly wondering if he should answer this ‘question’, before someone from
the Arts Office stepped in to diffuse the situation.
This scene was indicative of tensions and anxieties which characterised the Cork
2005 event as a whole. For CCC these lectures offered a way of exploring the city’s
position within wider artistic and cultural networks. This theme of ‘art on the periph-
ery’ (Assistant Director, Cork 2005, personal interview, 2007) would be a major
component of the ECOC year. For others, it was a further sign that their art and their
*Email: cian.ocallaghan@nuim.ie
Vol. 18, No. 2, March 2012, 185–204
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2011.567331
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C. O’Callaghan
idea of culture had become increasingly peripheral to the ‘official’ vision reflected in
the Cork 2005 programme.
Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the
ECOC has increasingly come to be viewed by host cities as a tool to regenerate,
rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms. As Bayliss (2007,
p. 889) suggests, ‘… the use of culture as a driver for urban economic growth is now
an established feature of the policy agenda’. The ECOC has evolved in parallel with
these trends, and host cities have been increasingly criticised for failing to enable local
cultural ownership, overcome real social divides, and create lasting cultural legacies
(Boyle and Hughes 1991, Paddison 1993, Richards 2000, Garcia 2005, Griffiths 2006,
Herrero et al. 2006, Sacco and Blessi 2006). Indeed, as Palmer (2004, p. 46) suggests
in his study of ECOC, most host cities mobilise the event as part of a broader strategy
of urban-economic development, and organisers struggled ‘… to balance the demands
of international arts programming and local cultural development’. Thus, the contes-
tations described here were not unique to Cork. Williams (2004, p. 3) describes the
post-industrial city as ‘anxious’, suggesting that it ‘… exists in tension with these
other kinds of taste, and with the other attitudes to the urban that underpin it’. The
ECOC encapsulates this perspective quite succinctly, in that the staging of the event
tends to produce a space in which tensions are brought to the fore.
Two months after Bianchini’s lecture, the Where’s Me Culture? group (WMC?)
was established as a vehicle to present an ‘alternative’ vision of Cork as the cultural
capital. To generalise, the event divided the city’s arts practitioners between those
who saw it as an opportunity for Cork to stage an international arts event, and those
who saw it as an opportunity to stage Cork’s culture for an international audience.
These two versions of the cultural city sit in a sometimes uncomfortable unison,
simultaneously enabled and disabled by the ECOC event.
In this paper, I argue that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself. The
ECOC has come to be viewed as a multi-dimensional action that must incorporate
economic and cultural objectives, must represent both local cultural heritage and Euro-
pean identities, and must stage an international arts event while simultaneously advanc-
ing the local cultural sector and social inclusion objectives. These multiple objectives
are not mutually reinforcing and often contradictory. The ECOC has become alienated
from its original, comparably modest, objectives, while, in its current format, the ECOC
promises more than it can realistically deliver. Many critics have suggested how social
objectives frequently lose out to economic goals. Few ECOC have managed to replicate
the success of Glasgow in regeneration terms or culturally repositioning themselves in
Europe. With the notable exceptions of Liverpool and Lille, few cities have achieved
a high profile in the international media, sustained image enhancement and tourist
attraction through hosting the event.
Based on primary research undertaken in Cork between 2005 and 2008, I argue in
this paper that the set of mutually antagonistic discourses and policy objectives that
the ECOC is constituted within create inevitable fragmentation, anxiety and disso-
nance in host cities. Focussing on a number of pivotal instances during the preparation
and staging of the Cork 2005 event, I explore the ways in which the discourses under-
pinning it produced a series of contestations within the cultural sector, and how this
led to the mobilisation of a counter-narrative. The paper uses the ambivalent outcomes
of Cork 2005 as a starting point to address some of the ways in which the ECOC could
be mobilised as a cultural policy designed to encourage debate and dissent in order to
stimulate the arts through creative dialogue.
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European cultural policy and the ECOC
Some of the key debates in cultural policy arenas in recent years have centred on
the use of major events as tools to regenerate and rebrand cities (Gradach and
Loukaitou-Sideris 2007). Critics have questioned the extent to which such initia-
tives incorporate the participation of local communities and stimulate local cultural
ownership (Bailey et al. 2004, Garcia 2004, Gibson and Stevenson 2004, Jones and
Wilks-Heeg 2004, Lee 2007), and also the degree to which the arts can remain
autonomous when increasingly judged by economic measurements (Garnham 2005,
Royseng 2008, Vuyk 2010). In combination with the burgeoning support for
‘creativity’ agendas (Landry 2000, Florida 2002), culture-led approaches to regener-
ation have contributed to a redefining of the arts away from associations with the
‘public good’ to arguments about its economic value. As Caust (2003, p. 61)
suggests:
Over the past twenty years the need to justify government support for the arts has been
dominated by the desire to prove that ‘art’ has other benefits, particularly economic ones.
It has been used as an instrument to justify investment into cities (e.g. the Cultural Capitals
of Europe), boost employment, encourage export, support innovation and demonstrate
leadership. By taking this approach the arts sector has arguably been diminished, divided
and confused. Equating the making of the art with the selling of art undermines the process
of the doing.
Since its inception in 1985, the ECOC (originally European City of Culture) event
has gone from a resolute attempt to represent the cultural diversity of the EU, to a
multi-dimensional action, incorporating economic and developmental as well as
cultural imperatives, which increasingly supports an EU political agenda of European
integration and is hotly contested by member states. Originally the ECOC claimed ‘to
be not just a festival, but also a venue for exchange, debate, and reflection’ (Sassatelli
2008, p. 234), whereas the designation currently ‘allows cities to capitalise on cultural
events to implement regeneration operations’ (Balsas 2004, p. 397). For the EU, the
ECOC in part operates as a tool for promoting European identity and supporting
development strategies on a regional level (Sassatelli 2008). Cultural policy has
become an area of increasing centrality for the EU. In 2007, the European Council
adopted a resolution on a European Agenda for Culture (European Council 2007), in
which its importance was recognised in terms of the promotion of cultural diversity
and intercultural dialog, as a catalyst for creativity (and an economic driver), and as a
vital element of international relations. A recent report by the European Commission
(2010, p. 2) suggests that:
Culture lies at the heart of the European project and is the anchor of which the European
Union’s ‘unity in diversity’ is founded. The combination of respect for cultural diversity
and the ability to unite around shared values has guaranteed the peace, prosperity and
solidarity the EU enjoys. In today’s globalising world, culture can make a unique contri-
bution to a European Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, promoting
stability, mutual understanding and cooperation worldwide.
While such agendas have been formalised relatively recently, these broader prin-
ciples have been in existence over a much longer period. The ECOC is symptomatic
of the proposition of ‘unity in diversity’ and the evolution of the event reflects the
EU’s increasing engagement with cultural policy to support and transmit the project
of integration.
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In 1999, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union gave
the ECOC the status of a Community Action, establishing a number of important
changes to the policy structure of the event. It was recognised that the ECOC ‘…
initiative is important both for strengthening local and regional identity and for foster-
ing European integration’ and that consequently the ‘… event calls for the creation of
a rotational system of designation which will ensure that each Member State will
have one of its cities chosen at regular intervals … [A] predictable, consistent and
transparent rotational system is best achieved through a single decision whereby the
order in which Member States will hold the event is decided’ (European Council
1999). This new rotation system would take effect from 2005 onwards, with Cork as
the first city designated under this arrangement. ‘Each city shall organise a
programme of cultural events highlighting the city’s own culture and cultural heritage
as well as its place in the common cultural heritage, and involving people concerned
with cultural activities from other European countries with a view to establishing last-
ing cooperation’ (European Council 1999). In addition, designated cities were asked
to take into account a list of twelve different possible elements including ‘… the
organisation of activities designed to encourage artistic innovation, the contribution
to the development of economic activity and the need to develop high-quality and
innovative cultural tourism’ (Palmer 2004, p. 39). This decision was superseded by
an updated version in 2006, which further embedded the European added value
dimension of the ECOC programme while also aiming to strengthen the benefit in
terms of the ‘long-term cultural and social development of the city’ (European
Council 2006). Also, slated in this decision is a longer period of preparation for
designated cities (six years) and more rigorous selection and monitoring processes
throughout.
Since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, cities have increasingly used the ECOC
as a regeneration tool. Garcia (2004, p. 106) argues that Glasgow was the first city that
had to demonstrate that it ‘deserved’ the ECOC designation, in contrast to previous
host cities that were already established cultural centres. Glasgow ‘… was the first city
to win the title after an open national competition, the first to have more than three
years to plan the event, the first to gather substantial public and private support to fund
event-specific initiatives and the first to understand the potential of the ECOC as a
catalyst for urban regeneration through culture’ (Garcia 2005, p. 844). Despite sugges-
tions that the long-term benefits the event had on the city were primarily cosmetic and
did nothing to combat entrenched social problems (Boyle and Hughes 1991, Paddison
1993, Garcia 2005), Glasgow was ‘… a turning point for the ambitions of
ECOC…[and almost] all cities that followed have taken a similar approach’ (Palmer
2004, p. 43).
ECOC have struggled to balance ‘local community needs with the interests of
external visitors and media viewers/readers’ (Garcia 2004, p. 115) and host cities have
been widely criticised for placing regeneration and tourism ambitions over any redis-
tributive potential of the event (Paddison 1993, Boyle 1997, Balsas 2004, Garcia
2005, O’Callaghan and Linehan 2007, O’Brien 2010). However, what often goes
unacknowledged is the problem of assuming that such a balance can be reached
through the current guise of the ECOC event. As a ‘catch all’ event, the ECOC prom-
ises more than it can realistically deliver on. Furthermore, the sets of objectives that
are presupposed in the event – such as fostering cooperation between cultural opera-
tors and practitioners in the host member state and other member states, fostering the
participation of citizens and forming part of a sustainable long-term approach to local
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cultural development (European Council 2006) – are not readily reconcilable with
each other, primarily in that they presuppose the importance of a European integration
agenda at the local level.
The city of making: Cork 2005, a ‘typical’ ECOC
As was the case with many ECOC, in Cork the event was also used in accordance with
plans to regenerate the city’s industrial waterfront and to script new urban identities
(O’Callaghan and Linehan 2007). In rolling out the ECOC project, CCC certainly took
inspiration from Dublin’s year as ECOC in 1991. In Dublin, the event was used as the
stimulus to redevelop the area of Temple Bar as a ‘cultural quarter’, and to ‘rebrand’
Dublin as a cosmopolitan European city (Montgomery 1995, MacLaran and McGuirk
2001). This type of culture-led regeneration approach was further rolled out in the
redevelopment of the city’s industrial docklands over the following decade (Moore
2008), an approach also mirrored in Cork (O’Callaghan 2007, O’Callaghan and
Linehan 2007). While it is perhaps a stretch to speak comparatively about Cork and
Glasgow as post-industrial port cities – indeed Cork’s docklands strategy (Cork City
Council 2002) takes urban design inspiration more centrally from cities such as
Hamburg – CCC were certainly cognisant of the strategies used by Glasgow to
rebrand its image and provide a stimulus for regeneration through the ECOC event,
and aimed to follow a similar trajectory:
[Cork 2005] comes at a moment of renewal and optimism. In recent years we have
become a much more open society and a more open city. Encouraged by the City
Manager, Joe Gavin, people have a sense of a new kind of city, a vibrant city, a Cork of
the future. Cork 2005 will not only make the new city better known, but will create a
legacy of knowledge; a model of what a city can be if we all work together. (Cork 2005,
2004, p. xvi)
The event was managed and implemented by an independent company, Cork
2005, which was established by CCC shortly after Cork’s designation in 2001. This
group contained members of CCC and the arts and cultural sector, along with some
private-sector representation. From the beginning of the bid process, the ECOC was
viewed by CCC as a vehicle to transmit new images of Cork to a global audience
that would advertise evolving regeneration objectives. CCC’s Arts Officer stated
that, ‘… we always recognised that cities now all over the world are in competition
with each other … for inward investment … for tourism … And we recognised the
value of [the ECOC] … to all aspects of the city’ (Arts Officer, CCC, personal inter-
view, 2005). The bid document, in part, highlighted that Cork would benefit from
the ECOC designation in terms of improving its international image, strengthening
its tourist markets and making it a more attractive place to live and work (Cork City
Council 2001, p. 56). This agenda was subsequently reinforced through the imple-
mentation of a programme of capital projects valued at 196 million (Cork City
Council 2004), involving infrastructural and public realm improvements, many of
which (including the redesign of the city’s main street, St Patrick Street) were
intended to contribute to and coincide with the ECOC year (Linehan 2005). Accord-
ing to City Manager, Joe Gavin, this was intended to form a ‘twin track’ approach
whereby the event was used as an incentive to ‘fast track’ urban improvements
(Quinn 2010, p. 252).
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The operating budgets of ECOC have been divergent, ranging from 10 million
in the case of Krakow 2000 to 77.7 million in the case of Lille 2004 (see Palmer
2004). When compared to the per-capita spend of other ECOC, Cork’s budget of 21
million is placed somewhere in the middle (Figure 1). While a range of other vari-
ables, such as inflation rates, currency exchange rates and differences in value for
money between contexts, prevent this from being a representative comparative
measure, it does suggest that in terms of its budget, Cork offers a relatively ‘normal’
example of an ECOC programme.
Figure 1. Spend per-capita of a selection of ECOC. Worked out from estimates of budgets reported by Palmer (2004) correlated with populations of large urban areas at the time of each city’s staging of the ECOC event taken from Eurostat (2011).
A total of 244 events/activities – divided into ‘strands’ that included: architec-
tural, design and visual arts; festivals; film, media and sound; literature, conferences
and publications; music; residences, research and processes; sport; theatre; dance,
culture and health; and culture and community – were contained within the
programme (Quinn 2010, p. 253) and staged in various venues. The ECOC was
marketed through a culture-led regeneration approach that privileged a narrative of
connectivity which situated Cork as a city hooked into global flows of culture, knowl-
edge and capital. An evocative section of the bid document, written by (poet and
subsequently one of two Assistant Directors of the event) Tom McCarthy presents
Cork as a city of cosmopolitan culture by virtue of its port status, where common
pursuits mingle with elevated artistic ideals, and where economic development and
cultural expression have always gone hand-in-hand. Throughout this narrative of the
city’s storied commercial history, cultural pursuits were imagined as a constant force
that propelled Cork from one juncture to the next, and thus, streamlined the ECOC
with the docklands plans. One section, for example, tells the stories of a series of
Cork artists and intellectuals (artists such as painter James Barry, satirist ‘Father
Prout’ and writer Frank O’Connor) who were characterised as having an ‘… interna-
tional viewpoint, [that] is typical of entire generations of Cork men and women’
(Cork City Council 2001, p. 10). Cork’s ‘… ability to connect, to hope, to dream, to
trade its way back to prosperity …’ has allowed it to overcome various obstacles and
that ‘[t]rade and art, commerce and poetry were intermingled in a single effort of will
to restore local confidence’ (Cork City Council 2001, p. 8).
In general, the discourses used by ECOC often try to streamline issues of ‘local’
culture with the image of the city as international or ‘global’. In their bid document
for the 2008 ECOC, for example, Liverpool described local identity as ‘… both
Figure 1. Spend per-capita of a selection of ECOC. Worked out from estimates of budgets
reported by Palmer (2004) correlated with populations of large urban areas at the time of each
city’s staging of the ECOC event taken from Eurostat (2011).
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local and international – The World in One City’. Similarly, Bristol’s unsuccessful
2008 bid described ‘… a city of paradoxes: parochial and international; conservative
and radical; maverick and traditional; old and modern; laid back and ambitious;
independent and collaborative; comfortable and restless’ (quoted in Griffiths 2006,
p. 426).
While the Cork 2005 organisers were inherently aware of the opportunities
presented through the event to make linkages between Cork and the wider European
cultural sphere in terms of artists and organisations, and to enhance the city’s interna-
tional profile, and were keen to accentuate these international aspects, the marketing
of the event often portrayed it as emphasising a version of culture that was ‘rooted in
its own community’ (Cork 2005, 2004, p. x). When the official programme of events
(Cork 2005, 2004) was revealed in late 2004, the accompanying book contained a
number of introductions and letters of support from prominent figures in politics and
business in the region, which emphasised two major points. Firstly, that Cork 2005
was a key aspect of Cork’s regeneration policy and a symbol of transformations to
come. And, secondly, that the ECOC was an accurate and authentic reflection of Cork
culture. Firmly planting his feet on Cork’s imagined cultural ground, one commenta-
tor suggested that culture is ‘… a sing-song at two in the morning, it’s socialising, it’s
black pudding, it’s sport and a sense of shared pride’, and something that is
‘constantly evolving’ (Cork 2005, 2004, pp. x–xii). Such cloying representations of
place were squared with festival director John Kennedy’s assertion that the event was
a celebration ‘… not only for ourselves in Cork, but for a changing Europe for Ireland’
(Cork 2005, 2005). On the one hand, Cork 2005 was something that ‘belonged’ to the
local population, a representation and validation of local cultural practices, while on
the other hand, it was an arts festival that needed to connect and be relevant to an
international audience.
In general terms, the programme offered a wide range of events covering a variety
of disciplines, focussing on local and collaborative ventures, and which could be
narrated and understood as having ‘high art’, community and popular orientations. It
was, nevertheless, subject to disputes over what was perceived to be included and
excluded and how ‘accurately’ it portrayed the range of cultural activities in the city.
While any programme of events is likely to produce disagreement among both
cultural practitioners and the general public, ECOC tend to produce dissonance
between the ‘official’ representation of the city’s cultural infrastructures and other
representations that are variously narrated as more ‘authentic’ or representative of the
locality. ECOC such as Glasgow (Boyle and Hughes 1991), Liverpool (Fitzpatrick
2009, Boland 2010) and Istanbul (Gunay 2010) have all been characterised in various
ways by these disputes. Cork 2005 was affected by similar issues, which I argue were
largely produced by the ‘catch-all’ discursive framework that ECOC are expected to
operate within.
Art on the periphery: Cork 2005 and the ‘public call’
… It couldn’t just be a project about Cork, like. (Assistant Director Cork 2005, personal
interview, 2007)
In April 2003, Cork 2005 issued a ‘public call’ for ideas and suggestions for the
ECOC programme. From the point of view of the organisers, this was intended as a
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way of making the event inclusive, removing the perception that ‘… culture is owned
by a certain bourgeois sector or a certain group of leading artists of a certain genera-
tion’, and stimulating debate about the nature of art and what it meant to the city.
There were over 2000 ideas submitted, and in the end the public call accounted for
70% of the final programme (Assistant Director, Cork 2005, personal interview,
2007):
There was a lot of debate about it … it was a phenomenal amount of work; we were
saying no to 90% of ideas and pissing people off. But we thought it was important
because we tried to foster a sense of cultural ownership so that somebody … who wasn’t
a famous artist or a famous person but had an idea, could submit that and we would eval-
uate it … if they had an idea that was worth delivering, we would look into it. (Assistant
Director, Cork 2005, personal interview, 2007)
However, there was a disjuncture between what the public call meant from a
programming perspective and how it was represented through the marketing literature.
The organisers had specific thematic ideas about how they wanted to, and in some
ways were required to, programme the event. In fact, ‘… there was ten criteria that
projects had to satisfy’, including being of ‘artistically high value’ and ‘… speak[ing]
something about Cork to a European audience’ (Assistant Director, Cork 2005,
personal interview, 2007). In contrast, the theme offered for the public call was vague
in ways that were characteristic of the benign discourses in which the event was
promoted: ‘… to celebrate the renewal of our city centre environment, to rekindle our
spirit of community, to explore our culture and our identity, and to demonstrate to all
our vision of a confident 21st century city’. This cosy representation was upheld in the
local media, at least initially, in the run up to the event. For instance, after part of
the festival programme was revealed in March 2004, an article in local newspaper the
Irish Examiner suggesting that if ‘… there is one overriding feature of the programme
for Cork 2005 it is this: by the people, of the people and for the people’, and that the
committee had resisted ‘… the temptation to cobble together a series of events from a
“Best of” selection of previous cities of culture’ (Buckley 2004).
For festival organisers, Cork 2005 was predicated through a focus on ‘high-
quality’ art and interrogating Cork’s position within international cultural infrastruc-
tures. Some of the most high-profile events in the programme exhibited these themes.
The Relocation theatre event, for example, brought four prominent European theatre
companies to Cork in order to stage productions in various public spaces, Translations
was an exchange whereby Irish and Eastern European poets translated each others’
work into their respective languages, while Cork Caucus brought cultural practitioners
to Cork to discuss art practice through talks and workshops (Cotter 2005). Most prom-
inently, this was exhibited through the over-riding theme of ‘art on the periphery’,
which was used to emphasise a desire to integrate Cork into international (and partic-
ularly European) cultural and creative networks. The ECOC programme reflected a
desire to interrogate the idea of peripherality in terms of arts and culture and the inter-
connections between Cork and Europe. This concerned Cork’s ability to host an inter-
national arts spectacle and also interrogated the extent that artists living and working
in Cork (and by extension places like Cork) could meaningfully participate within
international assemblages:
[Artists should] be able to stay in a city like Cork and still have that international enrich-
ment of themselves and of their work … We make ourselves culturally significant by the
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work of the artists and arts organisations we facilitate … Because otherwise, you do
become effectively a backwater in Europe, which I don’t think we are, because the
majority of European populations actually live in cities like Cork …. (Arts Officer, CCC,
personal interview, 2005)
There was definitely a core intellectual idea about being on the periphery and what that
means … [Cork is supposedly] at the centre of the global world … [But] People still feel
Cork is small and insignificant … so that they shouldn’t have to achieve any sort of high
cultural value, because they’re somewhere that’s not a capital city. So we tried to raise
debates about what it meant to be a capital city through projects and talks and I suppose
creative engagement. (Assistant Director, Cork 2005, personal interview, 2007)
While such constructions were not necessarily antagonistic, they played against
the discourses that marketed the event, constructing it as rooted in its own community.
For CCC, the ECOC itself offered a vehicle within which to stage new ideas about
Cork. It invoked a series of urban projects in previous host cities that Cork would now
be associated with and signalled its entry into the ‘pantheon’ of European ‘cultural’
cities. Yet, at the same time as it sought to produce new identities, it claimed to cele-
brate established ones.
Reds under the bed: image and brand of Cork 2005
The branding of the Cork 2005 event offers another example of the ways in which
these anxieties were manifested. Cork’s county colours are red and white. It is known
as the ‘Rebel County’ due to its history as a stronghold for guerrilla fighters during
the Irish war of independence and civil war. This ‘rebel’ status still resonates in the
local psyche, and Corkonians are notorious for a sometimes partisan (though often
tongue-in-cheek) sense of local pride. Probably the best known example of the
mobilisation of such identities is the ‘People’s Republic of Cork’ (PROC) brand,
which plays on Cork’s status as the ‘Rebel County’ to cultivate an image of excep-
tionality. Taking design inspiration from socialist propaganda, the humorous initia-
tive proclaims Cork to be a ‘people’s republic’, independent from the control of
centralised government. In the run-up to Cork 2005 a regular column in the local
paper The Evening Echo was characterised by opinions such as the one quoted as
follows:
Cork city will never and should never be the capital of Ireland. It will be the capital of
itself, beginning by being the Capital of Culture. The aim must be to put a plan in place
for the gradual (or preferably instant) severance between the Irish state and County Cork
with the aim of creating a people’s republic where Cork people can finally govern them-
selves. (People’s Republic of Cork 2004)
Through a popular website and discussion forum, and iconic t-shirts, PROC have
created a brand that resonates with local and diasporic communities. PROC is
characteristic of a cultural heritage in Cork that is protective and supportive of home-
grown institutions and talent. This extends to a history of ‘do it yourself’ (DIY) activity
in the local arts scene. Cork has a strong track record for putting on gigs and club nights,
which nurture local songwriters, bands and DJs, and for a city of its size attracts more
than its share of touring artists. Similarly, institutions such as theatre company Corca-
dorca, and now defunct music venues Sir Henry’s, the Lobby Bar and the arthouse
cinema The Kino, emerged out of a DIY philosophy that sought to produce events in
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and for Cork rather than relying on a transferral of cultural products from Dublin. This
all feeds into a sense of cultural separation and self-sufficiency in Cork, which people
identify with in various ways. Such identities were recognised by the Cork 2005 organ-
isation as too partisan to satisfy the multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder nature of the
ECOC:
Everyone [involved in stakeholder workshops] was kind of keen to move away from the
sort of red republic image of Cork … there was a strong feeling, both nationally and in
our team that that was what was separating Cork from ever establishing a truly national
agenda. This whole insular thinking that can exist in Cork … There is a strong Cork iden-
tity but that can be read nationally as a big chip on the shoulder … We felt that Capital
of Culture did not belong just to Cork, it was a national designation. So that was why
there was a move away from the colour red, away from that whole branding as the
People’s Republic … The image that we were trying to create was a national one, one of
celebration …. (Assistant Director, Cork 2005, personal interview, 2007)
The programmers, therefore, eschewed Cork’s existing brand elements in favour
of a more neutral image, a stylised design of fireworks against a black sky (Figure 2).
Aiello and Thurlow (2006) suggest that the EU tends to operate within a generic
image system, which allows for ‘intercultural exchange’. They view promotional
images of ECOC within this semiotic system:
Figure 2. Cork 2005 logo.
One of the most common visual motifs are firework images, depicted with varying
degrees of abstraction, from photographic images of actual firework displays to the kind
of stylised representation in Cork’s publicity. An already cross-culturally available
visual resource, fireworks also symbolically invoke a sense of celebration and perhaps
persuasively hint at anticipated victory in the competition for European Capital of
Culture status. What is more telling about this type of visual resource, however, is that
it is both uncontroversial and again highly generic. These features are typical of visual
design work undertaken within the institutional framework of the EU – quintessentially
Figure 2. Cork 2005 logo. Copyright Cork City Council. Used with permission.
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exemplified in the design of the Euro banknotes, which depict widely recognisable Euro-
pean architectural styles without representing a specific or actual construction. (Aiello
and Thurlow 2006, pp. 153–154)
While the negation of the more local brand elements may have kept all the stake-
holders satisfied, it also served to further politicise these issues. Therefore, the key
artistic themes of Cork 2005, which sought to construct the event in a relational way
and as a debate about the place of art on the periphery, also became politicised and
contested. This lack of alignment between the image and objectives became a stimu-
lus for discontent, disengagement and ultimately the production of an alternative
cultural agenda.
Where’s me culture in the creative city?
I remember feeling very angry throughout 2005 feeling that Cork wasn’t being repre-
sented … the city of culture was supposed to be inclusive but only if [Cork 2005] said
you are included. (WMC? member, 2006, personal interview)
I don’t consider WMC? a grassroots organisation. I don’t know what I consider it. I think
it was a movement, that it was just a collection of people that were disgruntled let’s say
and felt not included and just wanted to be included. (WMC? founder, 2006, personal
interview)
In the run up to and during the Cork 2005 year, issues of cultural identity and local
ownership became highly politicised. The manifestations of these tensions were most
readily expressed through the WMC? group that were established in late 2004 by three
prominent individuals working within the arts and events promotion in Cork. Cork
2005 and WMC? mobilised selective representations of Cork’s cultural sector. Their
respective perspectives can be seen in their different approaches to opening the
cultural year.
On January 8, Cork 2005’s ‘Awakening Ceremony’ presented Cork to the world
through an extravagant display of fireworks and pageantry staged on the River Lee.
The same evening, WMC? opened the year with the ‘Big Party’, a hodgepodge cock-
tail of local music, comedy and art played to boisterous revellers freewheeling through
the cavernous corridors of crowed club. Both events staged Cork as a cultural space
but did so differently. The former projected outwards, imagining Cork as hooked into
European networks, and demonstrated the city’s institutional and cultural credentials
through its ability to stage an international arts spectacle. The latter was more insular,
a celebration of the ‘recognition’ of the importance of Cork’s cultural heritage, prac-
tices and pursuits.
While the example of WMC? offers perhaps a more distilled counter-cultural
narrative around the ECOC than those evident elsewhere, many of the group’s
concerns were those commonly associated with the event. According to the WMC?
founders, the group’s genesis was an attempt to create a space through which people’s
discontent with the ECOC event could be channelled into a productive creative outlet.
It was not designed to produce a coherent programme of ‘fringe’ events that would act
as a unified statement of opposition from the group. According to the WMC? ‘mani-
festo’ ‘… the responsibility for celebrating Cork as a cultural city is neither the sole
preserve nor the sole responsibility of the Cork 2005 office. Cultural expression is the
responsibility of all … as a collective we wish to work alongside and not against Cork
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C. O’Callaghan
2005, however, it is fair to say that individuals within WMC? are critical of Cork 2005
to varying degrees and for a variety of reasons’ (Where’s Me Culture? 2004). In the
early stages of their formation, WMC? made strategic moves to foster a sense of local
cultural ownership, through the organisation of a public meeting and the establishment
of a website and Internet forum. This first meeting, although attended by a group of
only around 70 people (McNamee 2004), was nevertheless a pivotal moment in terms
of the culture year, in that it created a discursive and creative space in which events
outside the official programme could be implicated within the ECOC. WMC? quickly
garnered a considerable media profile, featuring in the Irish and UK print and
television media:
… at the start it was really trying to encourage people just to get out and do stuff your-
self, if you’re not happy with the way it is [being done by Cork 2005]. Like we didn’t
want to be protesting, I certainly didn’t. [We]basically tried to encourage people … [to]
take something from the meeting and go and do something That’s what we said to
people, we can help you, we can try to get you, through the website, to as many people
as possible. (WMC? Founder 2006, personal interview)
While WMC? were not strictly ‘oppositional’ to Cork 2005, the way in which
they constructed an identity and brand image was oppositional to how the official
group constructed theirs (Figure 3). Their name was a play on the song title ‘Where’s
me Jumper?’, a hit for Cork band Sultans of Ping FC during the 1990s, and a refer-
ence perhaps primarily identifiable to a local audience. In contrast to Cork 2005,
WMC? embraced the city’s existing brand elements. They made prominent use of the
colour red, PROC style socialist iconography and discourse. WMC? worked as a
decidedly ‘local’ counterpoint to Cork 2005’s more ‘cosmopolitan’ image. WMC?
organised a number of events that epitomised this ethos. The most significant of
these were the Big Party and Big Picnic events organised throughout the year. In
addition, WMC? produced a magazine, and ran weekly ‘Speaker’s Corner’, while
various other groups and individuals used the website to organise and promote their
own events.
Figure 3. WMC? magazine: the WMC? image used Cork’s existing brand elements.
The initial creative surge of WMC? dissipated over the following months. As
WMC? became more visible, there were variant ideas within the group about its iden-
tity and purpose. The group later became somewhat characterised by disagreement
and in-fighting, and only a small number of core people remained actively involved.
The Cork 2005 Assistant Director, perhaps rightly, suggests that WMC? inevitably
‘… began to have the same problems as they were criticising us for’. The experience
of WMC? reiterates the pitfalls associated with channelling the creative energies and
cultural identities of disparate groups and individuals into a common framework
(even one as loosely defined as WMC?). Such a trajectory – from the initial creative
surge to a certain stagnation once group identity is established – supports Bey’s
(1985) observation that the creative potential of a group dissipates once it has been
‘defined’. WMC? questioned the notion that it was the ‘right’ of any one group to
mobilise a place-based representation of culture. In doing so, a series of creative
engagements were produced within and through the collective that were based not
around a consensus about cultural representation but rather dissonance from such a
consensus. This sense that there is something organic, inexplicable and context
specific about the nature of creativity is missed in the understanding of creativity
emerging from Florida’s (2002) analysis, which essentially sees it in terms of a busi-
ness-oriented model of problem-solving (Markusen 2006, Scott 2006, O’Callaghan,
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2010). The notion that culture has economic value increasingly informs the EU’s
cultural policies. As a symptom of this policy framework, the ECOC is expected to
produce a consensus around culture that links to and supports the economic develop-
ment of the region.
While the Cork 2005 agenda questioned what constituted a cultural place, they
did so in the context of an established political and discursive framework hinted at
through the ‘Creating a Cultural City’ lecture series. In contrast, WMC? sought to
question what culture meant to the individual through a DIY ethos encouraging
praxis:
… what we were trying to question, in the question actually, in the play on the name of
‘Where’s Me Jumper’ [was where is my culture]. But ultimately, that was the question.
I think I answered it for myself, personally, in that I went and did things … because ulti-
Figure 3. Where’s Me Culture? Design by John Foley, Bite! Design. Used with permission.
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mately, that’s what you should be asking: the question, where is my culture? What is my
culture? (WMC? founder, 2006, personal interview)
While it is probably fair to suggest that the image produced by WMC? situated the
collective most centrally within a certain cohort of the city’s cultural sector, and there-
fore was perhaps more inclusive to certain groups, the space for engagement with the
ECOC year provided by them was fundamentally ‘open’, in contrast to the carefully
curated programme of Cork 2005. I do not wish to suggest here that WMC? mobilised
an ‘authentic’ representation of Cork’s cultural industries while Cork 2005 failed to
do so, but rather to highlight that the subjective nature of cultural representation will
inevitably produce dissonance as the residual of consensus, and moreover that this
does not need to be construed as negative.
For their part, the attitude held by Cork 2005 towards WMC? was ambivalent. The
official response was positive. For example, CCC’s Arts Officer suggested:
… I actually think it would’ve been a loss if there wasn’t a group like [WMC?]. I think
that it would be a sign of very stagnant culture in the city if a group didn’t take it upon
themselves to criticise [Cork 2005]. (Arts Officer CCC, 2005, personal interview)
However, apart from acknowledging their existence, Cork 2005 engaged little in
the line of a constructive dialogue with WMC? The emphasis on regional development
objectives and on European integration as part of the ECOC event places a premium
on putting forward a consensus on what the city ‘means’ culturally both in and of itself
and in relationship to Europe. The messy image of culture expressed by divergent and
competing representations does not fit with the perspective of culture as an economic
driver of the region or as an expression of ‘unity in diversity’. Yet, it is often within
the context of such divergent meanings that culture becomes vibrant and interesting,
the relationship between Cork 2005 and WMC? being a case in point. While the ECOC
created a space in which such anxieties of cultural representation could come to the
fore, the inability of the organisers to get beyond its politicised identity meant that the
creative space afforded by such contestation was not utilised. This offers an example
of how the structure of the ECOC can in fact stifle creative engagement, rather than
encourage it.
After the party: the legacy of Cork 2005
… the ECOC constituted an undoubted boost for the cultural sector in Cork, although the
boost was not as spectacular as the cultural actors studied had initially hoped. Cork City
Council, which established Cork 2005 Ltd., remains a critical public funder of the arts in
the city. (Quinn 2010, p. 261)
The legacies of the Cork 2005 event have been ambivalent. In the immediate after-
math of the ECOC year, the city saw a boost in numbers of visitors and tourist revenue
and Cork 2005 was, by many accounts, deemed a success. In a statement on their
website, coinciding with the completion of an economic assessment of the year
(Maloney 2006), CCC proclaimed the ECOC ‘… an outstanding economic success
and greatly exceeded what we might have reasonably expected. Our total revenue
investment in Cork 2005 was 17m [not inclusive of private-sector sponsorship]. The
extra 90m earned in 2005 was the immediate economic return but “Cork 2005” has
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laid foundations for continuing benefits into the future …’ (Cork City Council 2007).
The economic report showed a 38% increase in visitors to Cork during 2005 in
comparison to figures for 2003, and suggested a 28% increase in direct revenue from
visitors between 2003 and 2005 (Maloney 2006). Most pointedly, Cork was named by
Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 cities to visit in 2010 (Lonely Planet 2009). In their
estimate of the city’s potential, they made particular reference to the ECOC event
suggesting that:
The stock of the so-called ‘Rebel County’ has been on the rise even more since it was
named the European Capital of Culture in 2005: modern glass-and-steel offices and
apartment buildings adorn the banks of the River Lee; new galleries, arts festivals, bars
and shops have added to the city’s cache; and restaurants and local food producers have
come into their own to make Cork a foodie paradise. (Lonely Planet 2009, p. 103)
However, critics have noted that such measurements often present a biased and
unrealistic representation of the impact of the event, in that they can be short-term
(Richards 2000) and can obscure the impact it has had on issues that elude quantitative
measurement, such as alleviating social inequality and increasing access and partici-
pation in the arts (Bianchini 1990, 1999, Albet 2004, Richards and Wilson, 2004,
Sacco and Blessi 2006). In the years following the event a number of important
cultural venues in the city have been closed. In addition to a number of music venues,
higher profile cultural institutions, such as the independently run art-house cinema
The Kino and Opera 2005 (an organisation that received one of five legacy grants by
Cork 2005), both shut down due to financial difficulties, while the historic Cork Opera
House has had to scale back its operations and its future is uncertain. Quinn (2010)
suggests that the long-term cultural legacies of the ECOC on Cork’s cultural infra-
structures have been limited. She describes Cork 2005 as attempting to adopt an
‘event’ (staging a cultural festival) and ‘process’ (using the ECOC to leverage more
sustainable cultural gains) approach to hosting the ECOC, with neither approach being
fully realised:
… the survey findings repeatedly showed participants criticising Cork 2005 Ltd., for
inadequately shaping a creative vision for the Year and for failing to develop a coherent
artistic framework to guide individual artistic contributions (from individuals to organi-
sations). Survey respondents repeatedly spoke of operating within a context devoid of
any overarching vision … [and] having little sense that their work was contributing, in a
planned way, to a bigger whole. The absence of vision was reiterated by members of
Cork 2005 Ltd.’s programming team and Board of Directors during the course of key
informant interviews. (Quinn 2010, p. 259)
This suggests that, even to those centrally involved, the event was a void of meaning,
confused about its place within the city and uncertain about the vision of culture that
it was promoting. Despite the bestowal of five ‘legacy grants’ (each worth 50,000) to
four initiatives and one organisation launched during 2005, the fact that Cork 2005
Ltd. was disbanded in 2006 after providing groups with once-off funding meant that
the potential for sustainable impacts were severely limited.
At the same time, other events in Cork testify to the continued resilience of grass-
roots cultural activity. An unsuccessful grassroots campaign to save The Kino cinema
from closure in late 2009 began with online social networking activity, translated into
a public meeting and, ultimately, a website and a trustee bank account through which
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people could donate money, highlighted both the cultural significance of the venue
and, in terms of its economic failure, the continued need for public arts funding. The
Camden Palace initiative offers another example of grassroots organisation in the face
of public sector funding cuts. Located in a large vacant building on the city quays,
Camden Palace ‘offers space and opportunities for artists and performers to participate
in a dynamic working experience on a scale which has not been seen in Cork City to
date. Part studio and rehearsal space, part collective project’ (Camden Palace 2010).
It facilitates arts projects, exhibitions, screens films and hosts Ceilis (Irish dances). The
venture is not underwritten by any public funding but follows on from the participatory
ethos exhibited by WMC? during 2005.
Thus, the long-term impacts of the ECOC on the city are not easily reconcilable
within the aims and objectives of Cork 2005. The regeneration policies have clearly
had some effect in repositioning Cork for international tourism. However, the extent
to which this can be sustained is questionable. As Griffiths warns ‘… the established
hierarchy of urban cultural destinations is strongly entrenched. It is a tall order to
expect former industrial centres to compete, in a sustained way, with the huge stocks
of real and symbolic cultural resources of Europe’s long-standing cultural centres,
such as London, Paris or Amsterdam’ (Griffiths 2006, p. 418). This is especially reso-
nant at a time when cutbacks in public spending have forced the closure of arts venues
and organisations. Despite the ambivalence of the outcomes of this culture-led regen-
eration approach, since 2005 CCC has increasingly seen the arts as an integral compo-
nent of their urban and economic development strategies.
This is indicative of the general co-opting of the arts into a justification of itself on
economic terms. As Caust (2003, p. 58) argues, ‘[t]here is a real danger that this
approach will lead to the production of safe, consumer-oriented arts product which, in
the end, may not be what the audience wants or needs’. Furthermore, in light of the
current recession, arts practitioners may fail to justify their worth when limited to
doing so in only economic terms.
Revaluating the ECOC as a cultural policy
Although ECOC have different experiences, they tend to be typified by some key
similarities in terms of design, implementation and contestation (Palmer 2004).
Within this framework the experience of Cork can be seen as ‘typical’ of the ECOC
programme. The money it raised and the regenerative effects it created were modest,
the lasting cultural impacts have been ambivalent, and efforts to mobilise city’s
cultural resources were left short despite attempts by both CCC and WMC? Like most
ECOC, it created dissonance between different versions of culture and different ways
of representing place. In terms of the plethora of stated objectives, the event fell short.
Nevertheless, it did create effects, which, while not as grandiose as those envisioned,
have been significant for the city. Many of these effects were predetermined by the
structures of the ECOC event, which presents a representation of culture based on
consensus.
In a recent paper, Belfiore (2009) draws upon Frankfurt’s seminal essay ‘On
Bullshit’ to critique the discursive rationale underpinning UK cultural policy. In Frank-
furt’s view, bullshit differs from lying in its ‘lack of connection to a concern with the
truth … [an] indifference to how things really are’ (quoted in Belfiore 2009, p. 345).
Belfiore sees this quality reflected in how politicians and practitioners construct argu-
ments for the arts through the use of selective data and information to build a case
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based on quantitative and economic terms, ‘sidestepping the more complicated and
potentially controversial matter of cultural value’ (Belfiore 2009, p. 349). She cautions
against the use of such strategies because they serve to further move debates on cultural
value away from the realms of reality:
… philosophers and scholars have struggled to describe and understand the way that
people respond to the arts uninterruptedly since the times of Plato. Any simple, straight-
forward solution to this riddle … bypassing or refusing to address such complexity, is
likely to be – let us be honest – bullshit. (Belfiore 2009, p. 355)
The policy framework of the ECOC is similarly couched within the terrain of bullshit.
While year after year ECOC struggle to balance the multiple demands placed on them
and end up with less than incendiary outcomes, host cities continue to promise these
same outcomes. In the majority of cases the ECOC will not culturally reposition cities
in a major way, will not dramatically alter the demographic profile of cultural audi-
ences and will not create a legacy of social inclusion. At this stage it must be obvious
to ECOC that this range of objectives is untenable and that the discourses underpin-
ning them have little to do with the reality of staging the event. Thus, the ECOC
programme follows a trajectory that forces host cities to construct the event in param-
eters that rely on a selective mobilisation of the event’s history and potential (essen-
tially a romanticised version of Glasgow 1990). The policy framework of the ECOC
should be relaxed in order to allow for a greater scope of interpretations of the event.
This means moving away from the view of cultural and creativity as components that
streamline with the economic development of cities and regions and the ‘flattened’
version of culture that this implies (O’Callaghan 2010).
The ECOC must be reinvigorated as a cultural policy if it is to remain in any way
vital. Judging by the experience of Cork, the ECOC can be a potent tool for cultural
policy. This potency lies not in its ability to ‘represent’ or ‘promote’ culture, but in the
ways it draws out debates about culture. The ECOC can enable a creative space
through which questions of culture, representation and place can be contested. It
provides a framework for asking questions about what culture and the arts mean for
communities and places. The aim should not be to answer these questions but to use
this contested space to stimulate dialogue through creative responses; practice as an
end in itself. While many ECOC claim to encourage debate, the politics of the event
stops them from truly engaging in real creative dialogue. One of the original aims of
the ECOC was as a forum for cultural discussion. When the meanings of the event are
set in advance, discussion is disabled and we are left with resistance. In order for the
ECOC to function as a dynamic cultural policy, it must openly embrace the praxis that
comes out of contested meanings.
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... Although the ECoC title is generally perceived as a manifestation of creativity within urban governance, a number of scholars point out conflictual processes and problems related to social inclusion, revealing dissonances stemming from the policy framework, which might not be based on the principles of social, economic or environmental sustainability (Boland, 2011;Campbell, 2011;O'Callaghan, 2012). Therefore, the role of other stakeholders in urban/place branding is also important (Kavaratzis, 2012;Zenker & Beckmann 2013;Ye & Björner, 2018), especially regarding the role of cultural events as the instruments of participative governance and brand co-creation (Lucarelli, 2018(Lucarelli, , 2019. ...
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With the increasing role of culture in urban regeneration, the reliance on the internationally resonant culture-based initiatives has been commonly seen as highly promising, particularly among transitioning countries facing sociopolitical and economic turmoil. This chapter provides an insight into the case of Novi Sad in Serbia, as one of the selected 2021 European Capitals of Culture (ECoC). It highlights the applied culture-led (re)branding process and its initial (un)sustainable features, as well as the modes of their integration into the cultural strategy and urban development plans. Although the study confirms that the ECoC, as a large-scale cultural initiative, has a particular potential for the effective (re)branding of places, as well as the inclusion and active participation of local communities and other stakeholders, it also demonstrates how the expected spatial transformations can represent a highly challenging task for the local government, especially on the level of management and implementation. The study further focuses on the aspects of inclusion, innovativeness and flexibility related to the process, as the crucial elements for the overall sustainability and resilience of both culture-led urban (re)branding and redevelopment endeavours.
... In the scholarly literature discussing the development, conceptual choices, and thematic foci of EU cultural policy (e.g. Shore 1993;Sassatelli 2006;O'Callaghan 2011;Näss 2010;Patel 2013;Lähdesmäki 2014aLähdesmäki , 2014bLähdesmäki , 2016Lähdesmäki et al. 2020), the focus and theoretical approaches taken vary greatly. Researchers have explored EU cultural programmes by perceiving them as the core documents communicating the EU's cultural political views, priorities, and values (e.g. ...
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