Audience perspectives on the European dimension in Aarhus 2017 events: impacts of EU cultural policy

Abstract

The EU’s cultural policy of creating a recognisable, common European identity is exemplified by the EU’s cultural programme, European Capitals of Culture (ECOCs), whose official purpose is to highlight similarities and differences across European cultures to generate a greater sense of European identity among the citizens of Europe. To date, there has been little qualitative investigation of how ECOC attenders perceive the representation of European culture in the events and what they think about using ECOC events to promote Europeanisation. In this article, I use the methodology of intercept interviews at four Aarhus 2017 events to explore these two aspects. Findings indicate that the inclusion of European culture in Aarhus 2017 events often went unnoticed by the event attenders, and there was uncertainty about what European culture might actually comprise. Instead of perceiving ECOC events as promoting Europe, event attenders tended to interpret Aarhus 2017 events within a local, national or international framework, with ECOC events perceived as promoting tolerance and intercultural understanding. The findings are discussed in relation to the value of ECOC as a political-cultural initiative for generating European citizens’ identification with the EU.     

Cultural Events and Cultural Tourism Development: Lessons from the European Capitals of Culture

One of the major forms of cultural tourism development undertaken throughout Europe has been the staging of a growing number of cultural events. The event of European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) is probably the best example of the new trends of cultural tourism in Europe, which is therefore used in this article to demonstrate some of the key issues surrounding the event-led strategy for cultural tourism development. Based on case study, historical approach and document analysis, this study reviewed systematically the cases, documents and literatures of ECOC over a 20-year period. The research findings point to a number of ways in which the ECOC constitutes a boost for the development of cultural tourism in terms of realizing experience economy, enhancing city image, facilitating urban regeneration, promoting cultural production and consumption, as well as establishing partnerships.     

Investigating the partnership approach in the EU Urban Agenda from the perspective of soft planning

At the European level, several strategic documents concerned with spatial and urban development have been published during the last decades. While these documents are essential to communicate European ideas and objectives, they are often regarded least influential in practice due to their abstract nature, legally non-binding status and lack of allocated resources. Though these limitations apply to the EU Urban Agenda, this recently published policy paper introduces partnerships as a new implementation tool. The partnerships can be regarded as innovative in two respects: On the one hand, they involve new actors, most importantly cities, in European policy debates. On the other hand, they ensure the anchorage of the Urban Agenda with a broad range of actors at various spatial scales without challenging its legally non-binding status. The Urban Agenda can thus be understood as another example of the move towards soft European spatial planning and urban development. This article investigates the notion of partnership as a soft planning and governance tool within the Urban Agenda. Moreover, based on expert interviews, it presents early opinions and expectations of actors involved in the development of the Urban Agenda and the partnerships on affordable housing.     

Diminishing borders and conflating spaces: a storyline to promote soft planning scales

At the latest since the argumentative turn, the crucial importance of language, narratives and discourses in the field of planning and policy-making is widely acknowledged. This can be particularly important for European spatial planning, for which the European Union (EU) does not have any formal competence. Thus, instead of enacting directives or regulations, the EU and its member states release legally non-binding documents, which contain ideas and objectives relevant to planning. In these documents, certain storylines can be identified, for example, regarding sustainability, balanced development and competitiveness. This article argues that there is another storyline, advocating the reduction of borders and the creation of new, soft spaces across Europe, such as city regions, cross-border regions or macro-regions. If picked up by national or sub-national actors, this storyline can play a crucial role in contributing to establish the legitimacy that soft spaces often lack. Based on empirical findings from the city region of Graz in Austria, the article aims to identify the elements of a discourse coalition, i.e. what the EU does to support soft spaces, who the actors reproducing the storyline are and how the storyline supports soft planning in practice.     

Rhetoric of unity and cultural diversity in the making of European cultural identity

The fundamental aim of the cultural policy of the European Union (EU) is to emphasize the obvious cultural diversity of Europe, while looking for some underlying common elements which unify the various cultures in Europe. Through these common elements, the EU policy produces ‘an imagined cultural community’ of Europe which is ‘united in diversity’, as one of the slogans of the Union states. This discourse characterizes various documents which are essential to the EU cultural policy, such as the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Agenda for Culture and the EU’s decision on the European Capital of Culture program. In addition, the discourse is applied to the production of cultural events in European Capitals of Culture in practice. On all levels of the EU’s cultural policy, the rhetoric of European cultural identity and its ‘unitedness in diversity’ is related with the ideas and practices of fostering common cultural heritage.     

The political impact of the European Capital of Culture: ‘Maribor 2012 gave us the power to change the regime’

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) is a cultural political initiative of the European Union and is perceived as one of the most prestigious events in the community. Existing studies have neglected the political effects of hosting ECoC in terms of engendering regime change in host cities. The present study therefore tries to fill this gap and demonstrates how the cultural policy of Maribor 2012, including its implementation, impacted on local citizens’ communication and political activities and contributed to regime change in the city at the end of the cultural year. The paper employed document analysis, participant observation of all the main processes of ECoC Maribor 2012 and in-depth interviews with management, programme organisers, cultural operators and participants. It shows that through the empowerment of local citizens by means of bottom-up initiatives in the effective planning and implementation of ECoC, they challenged the regime and neoliberal system of Maribor.     

Modern Greek in the European Union: Language,Economy and Culture

Abstract

For those teaching and researching in Modern Greek Studies outside Greece, discussion of the eighties and nineties is characterised by reference to changes in Greek political life, as well as in the Greek educational system and policy making directly connected with Greece's entry into the European Union. Greece became a member of the EU as recently as 1981. PASOK, viewed membership as temporary but these claims were dropped after 1985. In the same period changes introduced into the linguistic system of the Greek language led to discussions of educational and cultural interest. More recently, however, certain developments concerning the role of strong languages in the European Union have brought to the fore issues concerning weak languages, those spoken by less people in the European Union, and their related cultures. This has once again opened the forum of discussion regarding matters of linguistic survival and cultural variety.     

City/culture discourses: Evidence from the competition to select the European capital of culture 2008

In the current era of globalization, manufacturing decline and place marketing, many cities have turned to culture as a favoured means of gaining competitive advantage. The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) programme has been a significant catalyst for culture-led regeneration. In 2008 the ECOC title will be held by a UK city, and in 2000 the UK government launched a major competition to decide the nomination. This article reports on a study of three of the cities that participated in the competition: Liverpool, Cardiff and Bristol. The main aim of the study was to explore how far the Capital of Culture process in the UK had led to fresh thinking on what culture can do for a city. The paper has three main sections. First, it gives a brief account of the background of the ECOC programme and briefly reviews evidence on the impacts of the programme to date. Second, it outlines the process that was used to decide the UK nomination. It then looks in more detail at the experience of the three case study cities, examining in particular the discourses of culture and the city that seem to be at work in their ECOC bids.     

Politics of affect in the EU heritage policy discourse: an analysis of promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and ‘move’ the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the several sites is in various ways intertwined with extreme agony, violence, hatred, oppression, and injustice. However, the stories of the sites in the videos turn their legacy into a positive ethos of conquering these negative extremes and cherishing their positive opposites: freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. The affectivity of the videos prepares the receivers to adopt their political aim: support for the EU and European integration. The analysis indicates how affect has a key role in producing an impression of the irrefutability and choicelessness of EU politics.     

The Regional Impact of EU Eastern Enlargement: A View from Germany

Based on a relational concept of regional analysis this contribution emphasizes that European Union (EU) Eastern enlargement will primarily lead to a restructuring or intensification of interregional economic relations. However, it rejects the widespread view that at first the border regions at the present EU Eastern boundary would be affected by Eastern enlargement. This view relies on the problematic assumption that the regions' transnational relations are subject to a logic of geographical nearness. The most important nodes of transnational economic relations in an enlarged EU are not the border regions, but certain regional development centres in the interior of the European economic space. Thus the regional impact of EU Eastern enlargement should be differentiated with regard to different types of regions: Particular advantages come towards the structurally strong regions in the interior of the present EU as well as the accession countries, whereas the structurally weak regions at the present EU Eastern boundary can gain advantages from Eastern enlargement only to the extent that they manage to overcome their endogenous blockades concerning cross-border economic cooperation and a positive attitude of the regions' population towards European integration.     

New Spatial Patterns and Territorial–Administrative Structures in the European Union: Reflections on Eastern Europe

Abstract

Spatial patterns and territorial–administrative structures in Eastern Europe are a mix of historical?territorial path-dependencies influenced by the current path-creating policies. Since the early 2000s, the European Union (EU) policies, practices and challenges have concerned also Eastern Europe. This article discusses spatial patterns and territorial–administrative structures in theory, illustrates their practices and presents scenarios for their future in the EU contexts. The Europeanization of spatial policy and planning and the territorial–administrative structure harmonization are the key current trends. The transposition and implementation of the EU spatial policy mechanisms and practices in Eastern Europe are influenced by contextual path-dependent legacies and the uncertain long-term future of the EU. Conditionality as governmentality and relational regions open new perspectives to territorial dynamics in the EU and Eastern Europe.     

Brexit or Bremain: what future for the UK's European diplomatic strategy?

A major public debate on the costs and benefits of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union is presently under way. The outcome of the referendum on 23 June 2016 will be a pivotal moment in determining whether the EU has a future as a component of the UK's European diplomatic strategy or whether there is a major recalibration of how the UK relates to Europe and more widely of its role within international relations. Since accession to the European Economic Community the UK has evolved an uncodified, multipronged European diplomatic strategy. This has involved the UK seeking to reinforce its approach of shaping the security of the continent, preserving a leading diplomatic role for the UK in managing the international relations of Europe, and to maximize British trade and investment opportunities through a broadening and deepening of Europe as an economically liberal part of the global political economy. Since accession the UK's European diplomatic strategy has also been to use membership of the EU to facilitate the enhancement of its international influence, primarily as a vehicle for leveraging and amplifying broader national foreign and security policy objectives. The strategy has been consistent irrespective of which party has formed the government in the UK. Increasing domestic political difficulties with the process of European integration have now directly impacted on this European strategy with a referendum commitment. Whether a vote for a Brexit or a Bremain, the UK will be confronted with challenges for its future European strategy.     

Politics of tangibility,intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is ‘placing heritage’ – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physical European heritage sites are crucial elements in the policy through which the EU seeks to govern both the actors and the meanings of heritage. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of diverse policy documents and informational and promotional material, this article presents five strategies of ‘placing heritage’ used in the EU initiatives. In addition, the article presents a theoretical model of circulation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage in the EU heritage policy discourse and discusses the EU’s political intents included in the practices of ‘placing heritage’.     

An Exploratory and Reflective Process of Urban Spatial Morphology within Social Sustainability: Lessons from Middle Eastern Islamic Tradition

This article outlines the significant role of ideologies and values that lie beneath the physicality of the city, in reforming urban spatial morphology within a framework of social sustainability. We focus on the urban morphology of Middle Eastern cities, which have evolved within the framework of Islamic tradition, to illuminate the relationship between the ideological and physical dimensions of spatial morphology in all urban contexts. We examine the process by which a collective of religious, political, and cultural values underlying the physicality of the city have evolved into aesthetic conventions. This process played a crucial role in the maintenance of social and urban sustainability. We propose a form of “pattern language,” here termed the anatomical approach, that brings together the ideological dimension of a city's inhabitants and the physical characteristics of urban morphology. Such a model may help urban designers and architects to understand and create more responsive and friendly cities. It furthermore contributes to the planning education process by providing the essential knowledge and analytical foundation for site analysis and conservation of valuable contexts.     

大城市旅游结构性增长的驱动力——基于广州和西安的比较研究

以广州和西安两个省会大城市为例,通过比较广州和西安旅游人数和旅游收入的增长差异,指出广州城市旅游呈现显著的结构性增长,而西安城市旅游的结构性增长不明显。进一步基于层次与等级的旅游供给分析框架,解释大城市旅游结构性增长的驱动力。研究表明,城市功能和地位的提升是大城市旅游的结构性增长的主导驱动力。大城市要实现旅游的结构性增长,要重点提升旅游相关的城市功能和地位,如政治、文化、现代服务业、交通、商业和城市接待功能等,并配合旅游核心要素的建设以及旅游主题和特色的营造。结构性增长是判断大城市旅游发展效率的重要指标,也是指导大城市旅游发展的重要参照。     

‘Capital of Culture—you must be having a laugh!’ Challenging the official rhetoric of Liverpool as the 2008 European cultural capital

Major cultural events are increasingly seen by local stakeholders as important opportunities to stimulate urban regeneration, city branding and economic development. The European Capital of Culture programme is a prominent example. Since 1985 over thirty cities have hosted the title and today it remains a highly sought-after prize. This paper analyses competing interpretations of the success of Liverpool's hosting of the European Capital of Culture in 2008. It unpacks contrasting views of Liverpool08, from the official triumphant message of urban regeneration and economic renaissance to more critical analyses that problematise important elements of the event and its social and spatial impacts. In so doing, it challenges the hyperbole of culture-led transformation to reveal different geographies of culture, different cultural experiences and different socio-economic realities; it also offers an additional cultural reading of Liverpool in 2008. Through the example of Liverpool this paper shows how local culture is politicised, manipulated and sanitised in order to stimulate urban regeneration and construct a spatial re-branding of the city.     

Modelling diversity: cultural district policies in Doha and Singapore

ABSTRACT

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood’s cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales.     

Cultural icons and urban development in Asia: Economic imperative,national identity,and global city status

Global cities are characterized by the multiplicity of flows that they are implicated in – flows of people, goods, services, ideas, and images. Yet, global cities do not derive their status only on the basis that they are networked nodes. They also require particular forms of cultural capital. Cities with global aspirations have thus increasingly recognized the need to accumulate cultural capital, for which one means is to create new urban spaces, in particular, new cultural urban spaces (e.g. grand theatres, museums, libraries). These often monumental structures are intended to support a vibrant cultural life, in order to attract and sustain global human and economic flows. In this paper, I examine the efforts by Shanghai's, Singapore's and Hong Kong's governments to develop cultural icons as part of the strategy to help their cities gain global city status, and in the process, constructing shared national and city identities. I illustrate how such efforts are not universally interpreted in the manner intended, with city populations sometimes protesting, sometimes simply oblivious. At the same time, I argue that such strategies to achieve global city status are sometimes at odds with projects of nationhood.     

"后社会主义城市"社会空间分异研究述评

社会空间的分化与极化是当代城市空间结构的主要特征。经济转型伴随了社会分异程度的增加,带来新的社会空间结构。对于中国城市社会空间转型的研究正处于方兴未艾之际,但对于处于东欧和前苏联的所谓“后社会主义城市”(Post-socialistCities)的研究尚缺乏比较与借鉴。本文通过对“后社会主义城市”社会空间分异研究的综述,探讨了这一类城市在新的政治经济背景下新的社会极化对城市社会空间的影响,市场的出现和福利体系的重构造成了普遍的社会空间分异程度的增加,这类转型城市的社会空间表现出多元多样的空间分异格局。     

Towards new (graphic) narratives of Europe

The cultural policy of the European Union (EU) has become more important than before as economic crisis threatens to undermine the EU’s nascent political identity. This paper offers graphic narrative (or comics) as a medium particularly suited to the task. This suitability results from several features: (1) the text/image hybridity of comics, which eases translation into multiple languages; (2) the topological aspect of graphic narrative, in which panels compose a spatial network of relations of various intensities that is isomorphic with the theorization of European space offered by a key EU think tank; and (3) the potential for comics of the ‘everyday’ to narrate a plural, non-didactic identity with which both Europeans and others can identify. It is hoped that a policy such as this could have a more positive influence on the more territorial, exclusive notions of the EU.