The focuses and rhetoric of the ECOC initiative have altered together with the transformation of the EU cultural policy and political goals and discourses. The implementation of the initiative at the local level has undergone particularly significant changes as the cities have aimed to utilize the designation for various functions that have been topical in current cultural, urban, and regeneration policies. Over its history, the ECOC designation has developed from a short-term cultural festival into a year-long urban event which enables the economic and social development and regeneration of the city space. The designation has become a sought-after brand used by the cities in image building, place promotion, and city marketing. The following section discusses the major changes in the policies and implementation of the initiative and motives behind them.
To describe the shifts in the implementation of the ECOC initiative, Greg Richards and Robert Palmer (2010, 205–206) have identified three distinctive periods in its history. In the 1980s, the emphasis in the ECOC programs was mostly in high-cultural events. Richards and Palmer describe this phase in the history of the ECOC designation as an ‘expensive festival’. According to them, the next phase, lasting from 1990 to 2004, was characterized by investments in cultural regeneration. The ethos of a high-cultural festival changed notably after Glasgow was selected as the ECOC for 1990. Since then, various ECOCs have followed its example and used the designation as a tool to revive the city by investing in different branches of culture. Like Glasgow, a number of designated ECOCs have aimed to induce urban development and regeneration through the promotion of cultural and creative industries (Palmer 2004a, 103; García 2004a, 319; 2005; Oerters & Mittag 2008, 88–92). In addition, the ECOC year of Glasgow
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has been described as a turning point in the alteration of the designation towards a city-marketing event (Oerters & Mittag 2008, 70). According to Richards and Palmer, the last phase in the history of the ECOC, starting in 2005, is characterized by investments in infrastructure. Following these views, Monica Sassatelli (2013, 64–66) has described the current state of the ECOC initiative as a phase of ‘capitalization’: cities compete to become recognized as capitals (in accordance with the name of the ECOC title), but capitalization also evokes economic capital as both the means and ends of economic processes. As Sassatelli notes, the ECOCs invest their assets in the hope of greater economic as well as cultural returns.
In practice the aims to regenerate the urban space, invest in assets and (cultural) infrastructure, and create economic boost usually merge in the plans and policies of the ECOCs. Various ECOCs have used the initiative as a tool to revive the city and develop its urban space by upgrading cultural institutions and their facilities, modifying and modernizing squares and parks, revitalizing less used or declined districts by for example preparing and cleaning their environment and installing public art, constructing new buildings for cultural use, renewing streets, roads and the transportation system, and renovating old estates and heritage sites. Especially the empty industrial estates of the declined old industries close to the inner city have been transformed for the use of cultural industries and as places of cultural and leisure time consumption. The ECOC initiative has been particularly popular among declining industrial cities that have needed to shift the base of their economies from production to consumption and from heavy industry to cultural industry (Richards 2000, 164).
The ECOC designation has notably influenced the urban development and transformation of the city space in several ECOCs in the Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in its Eastern enlargement in 2004 and 2007. The designation has previously had similar kind of influence on the cities in the so-called old member states. The transformation plans in the Central and Eastern European ECOCs, however, have often been more comprehensive:
several smaller cities suffering from declined industries or other economic difficulties have either implemented or planned to implement large-scale construction projects and physical changes to the city space in order to reach
‘the European standard’. Cities carrying the physical and mental heritage of the past socialist regimes have aimed to strengthen their belonging to the European cultural and social sphere through the ECOC designation and the regeneration and urban development projects it enables. The ECOC designation includes strong symbolic meanings and references to the idea of Europeanness – and thus the designation has been used in the ‘new’ EU member states as a tool for branding the city as European and, more broadly, in remapping or rethinking the geography of Europe.
The cultural initiatives are the EU’s political instruments through which it aims to influence objectives such as economic growth and the unity of the union.
19 These particular objectives were brought into the focus of the initiative during the Eastern enlargement of the union. Through the initiative the EU aimed to influence the cultural unity in the renewed union: the aim was to get the new member states and their regions and cities to bring to the fore their cultural assets and to feel themselves as (culturally) equal with older member states.
Since 2009, the EU has annually designated at least two ECOCs – one in the so-called old member state and one in the states that joined the EU in 2004 or 2007 (Decision No 649/2005/EC). With this policy the EU started a concrete process of cultural ‘Europeanization’ of the recently joined member states. Cities in these states were put into a situation in which they had the chance (and were expected) to compete for the ECOC designation according to the criteria determined by the EU. After the change in the designation policy in 2005, tens of cities in the new member states started to prepare applications and develop plans in which the cities aimed to present themselves through their culture and city space as ‘European’. Along with the renewed policy, the ECOC initiative can be interpreted as having stepped into a new phase, in which discussions on Europe and a European identity have activated in a new way and become major focuses of the implementation and promotional rhetoric of the ECOC programs at the local level. The policy of selecting the cities among the ‘old’ and the ‘new’
member states will continue till 2032 (EC 2012a).
Besides the impact of the EU’s Eastern enlargement, some new emphasis in the EU policy discourses, such as the trend towards increasing civil society involvement, have influenced the implementation of the initiative at the local level during the past decade (Staiger 2013, 33). In those ECOCs where major regeneration processes and city branding efforts have already taken place before the designation, particular emphasis has been in involving local citizens in diverse cultural and civic projects. The designated cities have stressed the importance of local culture, its history, traditions, peculiarities, and characteristic environments, and the role of local artists and cultural producers as its creators. In these cities, the grass roots level of culture has often been considered as a significant urban layer which the ECOC should foster and support. Various recent ECOCs have focused on lowering the threshold of producing and consuming culture, and encouraging the citizens to play a bigger part in planning and implementing the cultural year. Several ECOCs have followed the example of Lille2004 and recruited a number of volunteers to help in the implementation of cultural events (Oerters & Mittag 2008). The attempts to activate local citizens and involve them in cultural production are generally related to the broader cultural political aims of taking into account the needs of different audience groups and diminishing the hierarchies between the different forms of culture. The recent ECOCs have therefore aimed to promote in their cultural programs not only the established art institutions and institutionalized art forms, but also the small-scale cultural activity and cultural acts in everyday life and environment.
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Even though strengthening and creating a common European identity and fostering the idea of a common European culture are the underlying identity political aims of the ECOC initiative, several scholars have criticized the initiative for losing its European dimension. According to Jürgen Mittag (2013, 30), the European dimension of the initiative has lost its importance over the course of time – that is until only very recently. Various scholars have indicated that the ‘European dimension’ or a European identity cannot actually be perceived in the contents of the ECOC programs and their cultural events (Myerschough 1994; Sassatelli 2002, 444; Palmer 2004a, 85–86; Richards &
Wilson 2004, 1945). Similarly, the evaluation report on four ECOCs of 2007 and 2008, for example, suggests that this dimension was the least emphasized aim for the initiative (Ex-Post Evaluation of 2007 and 2008 European Capitals of Culture 2009). Indeed, the ‘European dimension’ or a European identity may be difficult to perceive from the ECOC programs because the contents of the concepts are vague and abstract. In the programs of the ECOCs, the ‘European dimension’
has been, however, introduced both on the practical level by referring to the collaboration between artists and other cultural agents from different member states, and on the contentual level in various topics which have been described in the programs as European (Lähdesmäki 2011). The European dimension and European identity have been decidedly referred to in the planning, promotional, and policy discourses of the ECOCs.
In spite of the transformed focuses in the implementation of the ECOC initiative, the scheme itself has maintained its symbolical value for the designated cities, their host countries, and the EU. The significance and weight of the ECOC brand has increased evenly during the years. Maintaining the initiative as a desired and competed-for city brand serves the cultural political aims of the EU.