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Garcia(2013)European Capitals of Culture: Success Strategies and LongTerm Effects
Abstract
Abstract
The European City/Capital of Culture Programme was launched in 1985 and the ECoC title has been awarded to nearly 60 cities in 30 countries. The Programme has become a key platform for city positioning and a catalyst for economic and cultural regeneration. Immediate cultural, social and economic impacts are common and the capacity to secure long-term effects, though harder to evidence, has grown in key areas such as urban image change and tourism development. The latter is evidence of the stronger commitment towards sustainable legacy planning and ever more defined and locally sensitive vision statements. This report documents common approaches and success strategies, highlights the strongest claims of long-term effect and analyses recurrent challenges that limit the Programme’s ability to reach its full potential. Key recommendations are the establishment of a standardised evaluation framework, greater emphasis on comparative research and the creation of a formal knowledge transfer programme so that future hosts can better benefit from the wealth of experience developed in the last three decades.
Supplementary resources (4)
... Over the past few decades, as many governments included cultural strategies in their development agendas, this has involved competing for the organization of major cultural events or admission to programmes of international organizations. Supported by the expansion of tourism, these mechanisms aimed to increase the visibility and notoriety of their territories nationally and internationally, while locally seeking to find new forms of governance, preserve their heritage, strengthen the sense of belonging, and affirm the identity of their communities (García and Cox, 2013;Griffiths, Bassett, and Smith, 2003;Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris, 2007;Liu, 2014;Sykes, 2011). ...
... Many European city centres that received the UNESCO designation were later named ECoC. This initiative, also an object of intense competition between cities, follows the tendency to invest in the organization of mega-events, to which Portugal has not been indifferent, following its adhesion to the European community (1986) and the search for avenues to internationalize Portuguese culture, which was initiated with its participation as guest country at Festival Europalia in Brussels (1991 García and Cox, 2013;Palmer, 2004;Richards, Palmer, and Dodd, 2009). It will be up to Portugal to host the event in 2027, together with Latvia and a candidate or potential candidate country for EU membership. ...
... Over the past few decades, as many governments included cultural strategies in their development agendas, this has involved competing for the organization of major cultural events or admission to programmes of international organizations. Supported by the expansion of tourism, these mechanisms aimed to increase the visibility and notoriety of their territories nationally and internationally, while locally seeking to find new forms of governance, preserve their heritage, strengthen the sense of belonging, and affirm the identity of their communities (García and Cox, 2013;Griffiths, Bassett, and Smith, 2003;Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris, 2007;Liu, 2014;Sykes, 2011). ...
... Many European city centres that received the UNESCO designation were later named ECoC. This initiative, also an object of intense competition between cities, follows the tendency to invest in the organization of mega-events, to which Portugal has not been indifferent, following its adhesion to the European community (1986) and the search for avenues to internationalize Portuguese culture, which was initiated with its participation as guest country at Festival Europalia in Brussels (1991 García and Cox, 2013;Palmer, 2004;Richards, Palmer, and Dodd, 2009). It will be up to Portugal to host the event in 2027, together with Latvia and a candidate or potential candidate country for EU membership. ...
... It has been described as "a flagship cultural initiative of the European Union" (Barroso, 2009, 1), which should further civic identification with the EU, and political integration (Shore, 2000) by winning over EU citizens' "hearts and minds" (Patel, 2013, 2). Although ECOCs have been described as passing through three phases in their ongoing evolution and with respect to various cultural policy amendments (García & Cox, 2013;Staiger, 2013), the focus from their inception has been on presenting the "unity in diversity" of European culture (McDonald, 1996;Sassatelli, 2009). For Melina Mercouri, the Greek minister of culture who proposed the concept of a European City of Culture which later became the ECOC project, culture should be as important a strand in European Community affairs as trade and economics, and culture was envisaged as central to the political aim of European integration (García & Cox, 2013, 37). ...
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Tourism has long been noted as a double-edged sword for World Heritage cities that can lead to a wide range of socio-economic benefits while also introducing many stresses that both physically damage sites and affect local communities through gentrification and other socio-economic changes. Festivals, events and cultural mega-events are often framed with a focus on growing tourism, but they can also provide unique opportunities to align heritage with Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter explores these dynamics by looking at three trends that the festivalisation of heritage cities can lead to: establishing and promoting heritage-based city images; spreading out events to reduce stresses; expanding traditional definitions of heritage through involving local communities. Several examples from across Europe that have hosted the Expo, European Capital of Culture (ECoC) and the UK City of Culture (UKCoC) demonstrate varying alignments with the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UNESCO 5Cs to promote the sustainable development and inclusion of historic environments in broader city strategies. The chapter concludes by calling for a more integrated governance approach that can reframe approaches to go beyond just tourism attraction while anticipating and avoiding the potential range of risks of festivalisation.
People today are continuously searching for new experiences, and thus the events organized by a city can play an important role in influencing peoples’ decision to visit a certain city. In this regard, the title of European Capital of Culture can offer a city competitive advantage and it can help it improve its cultural as well as its social side. Hence, through the events organized while holding the title of European Capital of Culture, cities can better promote themselves as cultural cities, but they can also offer citizens and tourists diverse and interesting experiences and entertainment opportunities. Thus, we focused our research on the city of Aarhus. The purpose of our research was to assess the way Aarhus promoted itself through its events while having the title of European Capital of Culture in 2017, in order to extract some guidelines that could be further used as frame of reference by other cities in their development and promotion strategies. After analyzing one of the events organized by Aarhus- GrowOP - the only opera festival in Denmark designed for children, our findings revealed that the city used cultural events as a way to develop itself and attract tourists. The event was well organized, it was in line with the concept of the entire program of the city and through it, Aarhus aimed at integrating new and young audiences into its cultural life.
Europa to cywilizacja miast. Miejskość zatem można traktować jako znacznik procesu europeizacji. Polska, przez całe stulecia cierpiała na wyraźny deficyt miejskości. Kiedy na przełomie XX i XXI wieku ponownie zaczęła się integrować ze strukturami europejskimi, pozwoliło to żywić nadzieję na zmianę tego stanu rzeczy, ponieważ potencjalnie zaistniały wyjątkowo dogodne ku temu warunki. Europa, do której powracała Polska, przeżywała właśnie swoje miejskie odrodzenie, stawiając miasto w centrum zainteresowania polityk publicznych i gospodarki. Także w kraju zachodziły procesy, które powinny przekładać się na wzmacnianie miejskości. Reforma samorządowa, wzrost gospodarczy, napływ środków unijnych czy kształtowanie się nowego mieszczaństwa – wszystko to potencjalnie stawało się silnym impulsem do redefiniowania tradycyjnych struktur. Miasta zaczęły odzyskiwać swoją pamięć społeczną, kształtowały się nowe miejskie narracje, które wypełniały socjologiczną próżnię. Coś się jednak zacięło. Siła anty-miejskich struktur ukształtowanych w procesie długiego trwania wykazała zadziwiającą trwałość. Potencjał modernizacyjny, jaki niesie w sobie nowe mieszczaństwo, zaczął coraz bardziej grzęznąć w takich strukturach. W miastach, zarządzanych z perspektywy przedmieść, miejskość nie mogła się w pełni rozwinąć.
The active involvement of citizens in the co-creation of public initiatives has been embraced by the European Commission as a relevant topic on its reform agenda. In this line, citizen participation emerged as one of the main criteria for nominating the European Capitals of Culture (ECoCs). However, there are still few systematic studies that seek to investigate the challenges, the problems, and the difficulties that are associated with the processes aiming to foster and establish citizen participation.
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