European Capital of Culture as regional development tool? The case of Marseilles-Provence 2013 (original) (raw)
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Recent studies on urban change have emphasised the importance of culturally driven initiatives in the development of economic and social change. Concerns, however, have been raised in popular urban studies discourse that these strategies prioritise the economy and tourism over and above the needs of local residents and lead to the redefinition, and even the eradication, of local cultures. This paper looks at the case of the French city of Marseille as host of the European Capital of Culture programme in 2013. It analyses some of the cultural practices that arise at the intersection of a transnational cultural programme and localised cultural acts, and documents how some of Marseille's residents have responded to the European cultural event through cultural performances that address and highlight community concerns. Creative initiatives and urban renewal: Marseille European Capital of Culture 2013 In 2008, the city of Marseille in the south of France won the bid to host the 2013 European Capital of Culture programme (ECOC). One of the driving forces of Marseille's objective in the context of the European Union-led Capital of Culture programme was the focus on bringing creativity into the practice and policies of urban change. France's poorest city would now have the chance to generate culture over 12 months, in the form of creative performances and art, while attempting to induce high levels of economic growth through tourism and urban regeneration. In the lead-up to
2015
Recent studies on urban change have emphasized the importance of culturally driven initiatives in the development of economic and social change. Concerns however have been raised in popular urban studies discourse that these strategies prioritise the economy and tourism over and above the needs of local residents and lead to the re-definition, and even the eradication, of local cultures. This paper looks at the case of the French city Marseille as host of the European Capital of Culture program in 2013. It analyses some of the cultural practices that arise at the intersection of a transnational cultural program and localized cultural acts and documents how some of Marseille’s residents have responded to the European cultural event through cultural performances that address and highlight community concerns.
Culture and urban regeneration: the role of the European Union regional policy
Vinci I. (2008), "Culture and urban regeneration: the role of the European Union regional policy”, Proceedings of the 48th Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) Culture, Cohesion and Competitiveness: Regional Perspectives, Liverpool, 27-31 August.
During the last two decades several European cities have changed significantly their social, economic and institutional identity. This changing is the effect of a long term process of economic restructuring after the decline of the Fordist regime and the rising of the globalization. The policy of economic regeneration and the re-scaling of city's political economy within the inter-urban and regional competion is one of the most relevant consequence of this process. It is universally recognized that the strategies for the transformation of an old industrial city into a service-based ones require not only interventions on the "hard factors" but also on the "soft factors" of urban development: an innovative and vibrant urban environment is considered a crucial ingredient for the success of a post-industrial city.
Eurolimes, 2015
The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) Program was initiated in mid 80's, as a modality to promote the richness and diversity of European cultures. It soon became evident that the Program's impact went beyond the cultural and political aspects and that the designation was a marketing opportunity for cities to improve image on a national and European scale, a regeneration tool in itself. ECoC is today about cities reinventing their identities, re-narrating their history in a European context. The peripheral position, the unwanted heritage of the cities' past, soon became elements to be exploited and re-invented. The study is focused on two border cities that won the ECoC title and their ability to use the title as a regenerative tool, in order to foster their European identity, to favourably reorient their geography and to reposition themselves on Europe's map: Marseille-Provence 2013 (a Western Europe big city/region with an ex-colonial past and a peripheral position complex) and Pecs 2010 (a small Eastern peripheral city with a communist past). Applying qualitative content analysis on three types of documents: Application (Bid) books, official web pages and ex-post European Commission's evaluations, the article intends to identify the narratives used by these border cities to comply with the European dimension of the ECoC project.
Multi-Level Cultural Policy and Politics of European Capitals of Culture
The Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, 2010
"Rather than exploring culture-led urban transformations, media representations or city-image building, this article tackles the way in which the European capitals of culture (ECOC) has been a local, regional, national or European task. The responsibility for the event and the possibility to use it to articulate political identities is transferred from one level to another. This article discusses the ECOC as multi-level policy on European, national, regional and local levels. It works on the macro-level drawing from many of the recent ECOCs and hopes to inspire more in-depth analysis of case studies. Moreover, the article recognises the difference between explicit and implicit policies. The European Union, having been legally deprived of the chance to run explicit official policies until the Maastricht treaty in 1992, has still provided support for culture through implicit cultural policies and cultural policies of display, such as the ECOC. The cases considered in this paper vary, as the main emphasis is the exploration of the role of the ECOCs and the multiple levels in the process. However, quite often references would be made to recent Capitals of Culture, such as Sibiu and Luxembourg in 2007, Vilnius in 2009, Ruhr 2010 and Turku 2011. They highlight particularly well the conflicts between the levels, especially local and national, as well as the role of the region in the construction of a common reference point in the ECC process."
Urban Strategies for Culture-Driven Growth: Co-creating a European Capital of Culture
2016
Celebrating over 30 years of existence, the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) initiative has evolved from fostering intercultural exchange to becoming a leading cultural mega programme, credited with transformative potential for post-industrial cities. The shift from celebrating culture's intrinsic to capitalist value has seen the hopes of post-industrial cities pinned upon cultural activity as a catalyst for new growth. Noting this revalorisation, the authors of this book declare "culture has become big business" (p. 3), with the ECOC programme a desirable instrument for entrepreneurial "creative city" aspirations. The model has even inspired new initiatives in Europe such as the UK City of Culture, and further afield in Australia through the Regional Centre for Culture programme in Victoria. My interest in reviewing this book was motivated not only by the current staging of the Regional Centre for Culture programme in my home region of Central Victoria, but through its controversial past performance in my original home of Cork, designated as ECOC 2005. Cork 2005 provided important lessons around the bureaucratisation of cultural programmes at the expense of local creativity, leading to questions around whose culture is celebrated and for what ends (O'Callaghan 2012). It is against this backdrop that the authors provide an opportune look into the participatory process of "co-creating" a European Capital of Culture through a case study of Umeå 2014. Positioned from a management and organisation studies perspective, the book contributes important insights into the relational complexity of "co-creating" cultural mega programmes. The authors identify a notable lack of answers to the question: "can we actually include community as a whole into policy and public program schemes and initiatives?" (p. 4). To address this gap in understanding these tensions around community inclusion, the authors analyse the use of co-creation as a deliberate strategy for bringing citizens together for Umeå 2014. They consider how this vision of collaboration unfolds and is performed through various "action nets", defined as a clustering of actors that translate and enact the core values of the programme (p. 8). Chapter 1 sets the context by providing an overview of why Umeå 2014 is a valuable example for exploring how culture is used to not only drive cultural activities but reshape the public realm through design. They outline their definition of co-creation as being based around a participatory planning and decision-making process that engages and empowers a wide variety of actors in the community from start to finish. The range of methods used to trace this inevitably messy process of co-creation is outlined: from ECOC cultural programme database analyses to understanding how core values are translated into narratives and carried out through diffuse groupings or action nets. Part 1 (Chapters 2 and 3) takes the perspective of the "planner's view" by describing the planning processes surrounding the respective cultural and urban design programmes. This rich account of the background to the ECOC programme provides insights into how cultural mega projects map onto existing cultural growth aspirations and become catalysts for action. Part 2 (Chapters 4-7 plus vignette collection) turns to ECOC programme implementation by describing the "view from the action nets". Over this set of chapters, we gain insights into how a cocreated programme is performed and received. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the ECOC programme database and examines the linkages between programme criteria and actual projects, showing the importance of allowing scope for flexibility and bottom-up emergence rather than bureaucratic strictures. Chapter 5 turns to the important view of the programme participants including organisers, project URBAN POLICY AND RESEARCH
2013
This monograph is the fruit of an attempt develop an analytical framework to compare everyday cultural diversity in two multi-ethnic urban neighbourhoods in France and the United Kingdom. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the European Capital of Culture programme was used as an analytical entry point to explore: 1) the local, national and European cultural policy contexts and their interaction with urban restructuring; 2) policy implementation at the local level; and 3) the ways in which the lives and practices of ‘ordinary people’ and cultural actors are affected by cultural policy implementation. The research explored whether actual understandings and implementation of the European Capital of Culture programme are alike in the two cities, places with similar histories, facing comparable social and economic challenges yet situated in different national policy contexts. This study draws out the ways in which European, national and city-level debates on the norms, principles and pol...