Urban anxieties and creative tensions in the European Capital of Culture 2005: ‘It couldn’t just be about Cork, like’

Abstract

Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) has increasingly come to be viewed by host cities as a tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms. In recent years this has resulted in a predictable set of conflicts over cultural ownership, social inclusion and economics/arts dichotomies. In this paper, the author argues that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself, in that it has multiple objectives which are not mutually reinforcing and often contradictory. Based on primary research undertaken in Cork between 2005 and 2008, this paper explores how the policy framework of the event created dissonances within the cultural sector. It then uses the ambivalent outcomes of Cork 2005 as a starting point to address some of the ways in which the ECOC could be mobilised as a cultural policy designed to encourage creative dialogue through dissent.