The EU has imposed the ECOC initiative with manifold goals which aim to produce diverse positive influences in the designated cities. These goals have not always been realized at the local level. In this section, the implementation of the ECOC initiative is discussed by bringing to the fore diverse contradictions and conflicts it has brought forth. Many of these contradictions are based on different kinds of notions on ‘whose’ project the ECOC eventually is, and how it is used for ‘common’ and ‘communal’ purposes.
In the EU policy rhetoric, the starting point of the ECOC initiative is in increasing ‘mutual acquaintance’ (Decision 1419/1999/EC) and ‘mutual understanding’ (Decision 1622/2006/EC) between citizens and fostering the positive feeling of belonging. At the local level, the goals of the initiative are transformed into more detailed policy aims focusing e.g., on strengthening social well-being, intercultural dialogue, communality, cultural industries, tourism, urban development, etc. In addition to the positive and elevating goals and policy rhetoric of the initiative, the ECOC designation has caused manifold tensions, debates, confrontations, and disputes over the cultural production and management, economics, communality, and transformation and meanings of urban space in various cities. These tensions and disputes reflect the existence of deeply rooted power hierarchies between different operators, such as political parties, decision-makers, city authorities, the ECOC managers, cultural managers of the local cultural institutions, cultural agents and artists, diverse local interest groups, and local citizens. Particularly from the point of view of critical citizens, local interest groups, and cultural agents and artists, the ECOC managers, authorities, and decision-makers in the cities are believed to be trying to dominate or control the contrasting or alternative views and the attempts to implement them.
A common source of contradictions and disputes in the ECOCs has been the content and profile of the official ECOC program. Because the ECOC initiative is
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often discussed in the local policy rhetoric as a common project and endeavor for the whole city – or even for the region or the nation – several local and regional cultural operators and artists expect them to be included in the implementation of the program. Even though the cultural programs have been planned in cooperation with diverse cultural stakeholders in the recent ECOCs, all interested cultural operators, groups, or institutions cannot be included in the planning and implementation. In the recent ECOCs, management offices have aimed to take into account the grass roots level cultural activity in the cities by launching open projects calls in which anybody can suggest cultural projects to be funded and included in the official program. However, many planned and proposed projects have not been selected to the official programs and therefore have not been executed due to the lack of funding and facilities. The selection processes have caused disappointment among rejected applicants and therefore created dissatisfaction and frustration towards the planning and implementation of the program. Many grass roots level cultural operators in the cities have particularly criticized the emphasis and funding of the big and expensive high cultural projects and projects initiated by established cultural institutions.
Due to the tensions and contradictions related to the content and profile of the official ECOC program, the preparation and management of the ECOC year has faced a lot of criticism from cultural operators and local citizens. Related to the ECOC management, the financing policy of the cultural year has also been criticized in various previous ECOCs (see e.g., Boyle & Hughes 1991;
Rommedvedt 2009, 4–5). Disputes on financing have also politicized the tensions in the cities. In general, in many designated cities the planning and implementation of the ECOC year has been involved in the local political power struggles (see e.g., Palmer 2004a, 23). In some ECOCs, local politicians have aimed to influence the management of the cultural year both in relation to the economic and cultural content, in order to increase their political popularity and weight in the city. Changes in the local political scene and in the administration of the ECOC management offices have caused discontinuity in the planning of the program and uncertainty of the possibilities of implementing the plans, as happened e.g., in the cases of Tallinn and Pécs (see critical discussions on the implementation of the Pécs2010 e.g., Takáts 2011; Somlyódy 2010).
Besides electrifying the local political scene, the ECOC designation influences political dynamics at the broader national level and between other candidate cities in the host country. In many EU member states, the major cultural life is concentrated in the capital. The battle for the role of the ‘second most important city’ is often fought between several cities much smaller in terms of population, cultural infrastructure, and cultural budgets. The ECOC designation is a concrete means to gain credibility in the competition and stress the importance of the city in the national hierarchy of cities (Lähdesmäki 2011). Stressing the city as ‘European’ due to the designation functions as an instrument for the
53 attempts to relocate the cities ‘higher’ in the hierarchy (Heikkinen 2000, 212).
While the ECOC designation is often discursively defined in the non-capital ECOCs as having national and European significance, in capitals and other large cities in the host country, the designation of a (competing) city is sometimes seen as having mainly local or regional significance. Thus, the cultural year and its events may only get little media attention in national media or the local media in other cities. Limited media attention of the ECOC events in other cities may reflect the hierarchical and competitive positions between the cities in the host country.
The ECOC designation has been used in various cities as a tool for renewing city image and branding it with culture. The reimaging of cities and the branding rhetoric has been considered artificial and pretentious by citizens in several ECOCs (e.g., Boland 2010). The city image is never intersubjectively shared (Jansson 2003), and the attempts to influence individual notions on the city may therefore be experienced as gestures of control. The diverse regeneration, preparation, and construction projects in the ECOCs have an important role in the image building and city branding. The transformation projects of the urban space have been objected to in several ECOCs. Especially with major projects, many citizens have felt unable to influence the transformation of the city and have therefore felt ignored in relation to matters that are closely related to their everyday life. Even though in the planning and promotional rhetoric the citizens appear as stakeholders in the urban development, the civil participation in the planning of the development and transformation projects has, however, often been subordinated by top-down planning and decision making. Therefore the development and transformation projects in the ECOCs have been publicly objected and acted against. For example in Tallinn, the major plans for developing the previously closed and declined seashore area into a lively public space for cultural, leisure, and residential use caused tensions between city authorities and local people.
Several urban activists and interest groups were concerned by the plans to develop a large residential and port area on the seashore. Some artistic projects, such as the ‘Kalarand’, which were implemented during the ECOC year, aimed to draw attention to the use of land in the seashore area and the significance of the area for the construction of communality in the city. The residents of the near-by district contested the regeneration plans.
In her study on Sibiu´s ECOC year, Ana-Karina Schneider (2008, 33) has compared the urban space in the ECOC to a palimpsest. During the ECOC year, the public spaces in the city are turned into stages for diverse cultural and communal events and filled with new layers of meanings embracing the palimpsest condition of the city. The palimpsest nature of the urban space is not limited only to the physical or material environments. New layers of meanings are created discursively and in diverse representations in the promotional material of the ECOCs (Lähdesmäki forthcoming b). Space is always in the
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process of being made – in a state of being perceived and signified from distinct points of view (Massey 2005, 9). The city is comprised of a variety of different meaning-making patterns and interpretations. Different interest groups in the city may have their own discourse and ‘language’ in order to make sense of the urban space and thus create their ‘own’ city in the same geographical location (Pohjamo 2011). The different ways of perceiving and interpreting the meanings of the city and the diverse notions on the uses of the urban space have activated tensions in the previous ECOCs. In some cases the tensions have produced local movements and interest groups aiming to influence the meaning-making and uses of the city and its public spaces, as the final article in this study indicates.
3.2 INTERPRETING REPRESENTATIONS OF AREA-BASED