Cultural Capitalism?

In early 1985, Greek culture minister and former pop star Melina Mercouri and her French counterpart, Jack Lang, were passing some time during a stopover at a European airport.

In an excited conversation, the two developed the idea of honoring a city in Europe as a cultural capital. Mercouri said she wanted to create something beautiful and enduring while Greece then presided over the European Community for six months.

"I believe in cultural exchange. And I think that there should be not only a community of potatoes and tomatoes, but it must also provide for an exchange in an artistic sense," Mercouri said in an early 1985 interview with Deutsche Welle.

Athens was the first Capital of Culture

No sooner said than done; the Greek culture minister summarily made Athens the first Capital of Culture. The term lasted only a few weeks in the summer of 1985.

The beginnings were modest as Florence, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris followed Athens' small-scale example.

Then in 1990 Glasgow put on a much larger series of events that lasted the entire year. Since then, there has been a multi-stage application process with presentations and business plans, almost on the scale of the bidding process for Olympic host cities. The program grew even further in 2004, when 10 new member states joined the EU to bring the bloc's total membership to 27.

"As of 2004, with the new member states, we realized that we could no longer only have one city as the culture capital," John Macdonald, the EU Commission spokesman for culture, said.

"The rotation through every state would have taken too long. To speed up the process for the Eastern European cities, the Council of Ministers adopted, on average, two capitals every year," Macdonald said.

Specific projects such as the renovation of cultural centers, the conversion of brown field sites, or construction of new cultural facilities are the desired ends of the project. In the French town of Lille in 2004, 12 former industrial buildings were converted into a cultural center. A museum of modern art was built in Luxembourg, which was the cultural capital in 1995.

Culture as an economic factor

A study by the Commission says that, overall, the cultural capitals benefit from the honorary title.

But Bochum-based historian Juergen Mittag from the Institute for Social Movements has expressed concerns that the initiative has grown such gigantic proportions that it now lacks focus. As a Capital of Culture for 2010, the Ruhr region is uniting thousands of projects in 53 towns and cities.

"This initiative has taken on a life of its own, and now represents much more than a short summer event intended to showcase European identity," Mittag said.

"It is a huge economic factor. It is a huge media factor. It's taken on dimensions that would have been unthinkable in 1985."

The budget of the Ruhr 2010 project is 65 million euros, which will come from the cities and private sponsors. The EU is only providing a 1.5 million euro start-up fund. The cities are expected to develop private and public sources of funding themselves.

Still, cities in Europe are queuing up to grab the coveted titles. The application process is currently decided six years ahead of time.

Turku, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia have been selected for 2011, while Guimaraes, Portugal and Maribor, Slovenia have been named capitals for 2012.

Author: Bernd Riegert/sjt
Editor: Sam Edmonds