Speech of Rodolfo Maslias october 14th 2005.pdf - Documentation ...

Speech of the General Coordinator at the Athens-CongressOctober 14 th , 2005The Cultural Capitals, an incredible cultural adventureThe idea was very clear: to promote every year through another city the importance of culture for theintegration of Europe, to stress the dimension of the cultural richness, a dimension that was completely overfloated by the economic targets of the collaboration among the once 6 and today 25 countries of theEuropean Continent.The concept was less clear. Since it has not been defined by the pioneers of the idea, it has been left toeach city to fix its own objectives and to adapt the organization of the event according to its own needs in thefield of culture.The difficulty to compare the different projects and the lack of similar effects in all cities that becameEuropean Cultural Capitals, made most of us criticize the absence of a concrete framework and consider it adisadvantage of the idea of Cultural Capitals.Nowadays, I am deeply convinced that this freedom of defining the own concept has been the advantage ofthe diversity of this 20-years-long experience, since every city could adapt the title to its needs and put itsown objectives according to its position on the national, European and international level not only from thecultural, but also from the geopolitical and social point of view.I believe that the most successful Cultural Capitals have been those which could fix realistic objectives andwhich could achieve them.We have examples of Cultural Capitals that had a huge number of events, infrastructure projects, editions,but could not manage the amplitude of their targets from the point of view of promotion, organization andtiming with the result to be considered afterwards a failure, although they possess some record figures theythought that they would be proud of.We have other examples, where cities achieved through their project a sustainable result that changed thecultural life, increased the interest of the population towards culture, improved the social structure or themutual understanding between cultural communities, increased the cultural education of the younggeneration or created jobs in the field of cultural management and communication, or even changed radicallythe image of the city with beneficial long-lasting effects for tourism.Our Network is a very interesting forum for the exchange and evaluation of the experiences, since the peoplecharged with different aspects of a Cultural Capital or Cultural Month project explain and discuss insiderinformation on the advantages and disadvantages of their approach.The approach of each city has been indeed very different: some of them considered the title as anopportunity to affirm the position of the city in the national roster, as an opportunity to ask for exceptionalinvestments in infrastructure works mainly in the field of culture but also in the brighter sense of culture andcivilization including interventions for urban interventions. Other cities preferred to organize an internationalfestival attracting events from other countries and promoting their own cultural production abroad. Most citiesbelieved in the need of sustainability of the projects.The style of management has been also very different. Our Network organizing its annual General Assemblyin the Cultural Capital of each year and meeting often in the premises of the relevant organizations, hasexperienced very official structures with security guards, official offices, numerous staff, heavy structures withdirectorates for the different tasks and it has also met in large halls, where young people were taking originalinitiatives, where offices and computers coexisted with workshops for the preparation of the material ofperformances and exhibitions. We have seen teams not exceeding ten people over the whole preparationperiod and over the whole cultural year and also organizations with up to 300 people working for thepurpose.Three have been in my opinion the most crucial criteria permitting a city to succeed as Cultural Capital,which means – as I said before – to achieve its goals:1

1 The support and the harmonious collaboration of the political national andlocal instances involved in the project.Any conflict between political forces implicated in the event has a disastrous repercussion on the image andthe result of a Cultural Capital. We have seen even an example, where the regional authorities organized aseparate program competing with the events of the municipality. There have been also cases, where theconflictive relations between the involved political parts led to arrangements and compromises that had notthe success of the project as principal objective.In the contrary, we could admire examples, where all political forces, even from opposed parties, havecollaborated harmoniously and constantly supported the project, achieving excellent and sustainable resultsfor the city.2 The quality and competence of the artistic management.Most successful Cultural Capitals have been drafted by an autonomous artistic director and his personalteam coordinating, evaluating and adapting artistic contributions to a consistent general idea governing thewhole program. Inserting of any kind of proposals submitted without guidelines and without a central andconsistent philosophy of the project has never led to a success.Involving of the local artistic, cultural and intellectual potential of the city is also one of the important factorsfor the acceptance and the success of the artistic management.3 The adherence of the local population to the project and sponsorship.The title of Cultural Capital is always producing a high expectance among the population and the actors ofarts and culture in the city and in the bride region. The political instances in charge of the organization andthe artistic team must give a high importance to explain to the local population and media, the goals and theprocedures chosen to achieve them. A lot of Cultural Capitals had to fight for years with the continuousdefiance of the local population fomented by the local media and were obliged to convince before or whilethey were working on the project. The level of acceptance has obviously a direct influence on the sponsoringand on the voluntarism in the city. The sponsoring is getting every year a higher importance, since thenational and regional budgets contribute less money to culture as in the past and the EC-contribution hasalways be a quite neglectable part of the project’s budget.The cities that could count on the synergy of these three factors have been the most successful.The lack of a concrete framework for the organization of a Cultural Capital and the diversity of the initiativesover the 20 years, makes a comparison between the cities, not only quite impossible but also unjust.This is why, the travelling exhibition that our Network has prepared to commemorate the 20 th anniversary ofthe Cultural Capitals and Months has a thematic approach highlighting some important projects on hand ofexamples of cities having achieved the best results in each specific field.To prepare this exhibition, that has been for some years now our main task, the members of our Networkvisited the cities and their archives and selected together with the responsible people the relevant materialand the exhibits that have been elaborated by our working group and the technical team to be presented in2006 in the current Cultural Capital, Patras, and in the other two past Greek Cultural Capitals Athens andThessaloniki, and to travel as from 2007 beginning from Luxembourg, to every Cultural Capital each yearand to some of the past Cultural Capitals and Months.Some of the most important fields of the different projects have been infrastructure works, such as concerthalls, theatres, exhibition halls. Some cities designed them for the needs of the cultural year, some othertook the title only as an occasion to improve the cultural infrastructure for he future and of course some citiesthat wanted to combine both, encountered timing problems with negative effects for the whole image of theiraction.In the same preoccupation of achieving long-lasting results, some Cultural Capitals founded culturalinstitutions like museums or yearly cultural festivals.2

In the last years, many cities concentrated their efforts on projects with a sustainable social impact, likebetter integration of foreign cultural minorities or artistic education for children, or even accessibility ofcultural sites for disabled people.In order to exploit the international aspect of such a title, most cities organized a lot of internationalcongresses mostly on topics of cultural management and intercultural dialogue.Some cities tried to give a more permanent and international character to festivals or events they alreadyused to organize in specific fields of arts like cinema, jazz etc.Last but not least, a lot of cities saw in the Cultural Capital an opportunity to improve daily life and urbanstructure insisting on the aspect of civilization as one of the interpretations of culture.The policy of the European Union on Cultural Capitals has also shown periods of experimentation, withnegative results on the projects. The lack of continuity of the Cultural Months, the difficulty of making adecision on the Millenium-Cultural Capital that led to the failed experiment of 9 Cultural Capitals in the year2000, the possibility given to designated countries to suggest only one city obliging the European Union togrant the title independently of the opinion of its jury, the lack of monitoring procedures and the lack of anobjective evaluation by the European Institutions themselves on the basis of fixed criteria but also themodest subvention, have been in these 20 years some of the factors that have given to the Cultural Capitalsa less European character than they deserved as the most consistent and successful cultural event in theUnited Europe. The European Commission and the European Parliament have recognized the need of arevision of this policy and the new rules as well as the restructuration of the cultural services of theCommission themselves are in our view following the right direction and give to the Cultural Capitals the rolethey deserve in the overall European cultural policy.The Network of European Cultural Capitals and Months is disposed to play an important consulting role inthis new policy concerning the Cultural Capitals, offering the concentrated know-how of its members and thepower of a constantly renewed think-tank regrouping the project-leaders of each year in every corner of theenlarged Europe but also outside the EU-borders, where the European model has been copied.To be able to offer these services in a more structured way, the ECCM-Network is organizing this Fall itspermanent office and secretariat and documentation centre in the Cultural Centre built in Luxembourg by theoccasion of the 1995 Cultural Capital, it is joining the organizations officially recognized and financed by theEuropean Commission for their contribution in the field of culture and will offer on the web a site with all theimportant documentation on Cultural Capitals, the material of the travelling exhibition, important contacts andinternational projects and also studies of scientists and students on Cultural Capitals. This site will be alsoaccessible through the cultural portal of the European Commission.As Co-ordinator General of our Network, I want to thank you for honouring our initiative to invite in Athensthe cultural networks and organizations in order to co-ordinate our action in favour of the interculturaldialogue and the respect of the cultural diversity and I hope that we shall take together positive initiatives fora fructuous co-operation that will unify our forces serving the same goals.Rodolfo MasliasECCM-General Coordinator3