art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

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set out in their 1992 book, Reinventing Government – How the Entrepreneurial Spirit
is Transforming the Public Sector.
There is an ironic contradiction between neo-liberal rhetoric – trust business
rather than government – and the governmental processes through which the aims
of corporate business are realised. In effect, governments sponsor neo-liberalisation
rather than business sponsoring progressive change in delivery of public goods cultural
or otherwise. My final example of the process is the European Capital – formerly City
- of Culture programme, promoted by the EU.
The annual European City of Culture, inaugurated in the 1980s, was a means of
celebrating universally acknowledged great cities. In 1985 it was Athens, in 1986
Florence, in 1987 Amsterdam, in 1988 Berlin, in 1989 Paris. Then, in 1990 it was
Glasgow – Glasgow? If it had been Edinburgh or London, nobody would have been
surprised: but Glasgow! The selection of Glasgow signalled a turning point in the
competition. No longer was it merely about honouring what already existed; it had
become about something new, about regeneration. Glasgow had been famed in the
past for its shipbuilding and, indeed, radical politics. By the 1980s, it was in a terrible
state, a decrepit place of de-industrialisation and mass unemployment.
Debate over Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture still goes on. The rebranded
Glasgow is now said to be second only to London in the British Isles for shopping.
58,000 of its inhabitants are employed in what is loosely categorised as tourism
whereas building ships, even at its height, employed only 38,000. Yet, Glasgow
contains the three poorest constituencies in Britain where life expectancy is more than
ten years below the national average. It might be concluded from such contrasting
evidence that cultural policy is no substitute for social policy.
A distinctive but seldom mentioned feature of neo-liberal development is to translate
issues of social policy into questions of cultural policy. And, in its turn, cultural policy
ceases to be specifically about culture at all. The predominant rationale for cultural
policy today is economic, in terms of competitiveness and regeneration; and, to a
lesser extent social, as an implausible palliative to exclusion and poverty. A similar
process to the paradigmatic case of Glasgow is occurring with regard to Britain’s
designated European Capital of Culture for 2008, Liverpool.
Similarly to Glasgow, the port of Liverpool on the Mersey Estuary in the North West
of England experienced a precipitate decline in the post-Second World War period.
Its population has fallen by over half, from 850,000 to 400,000. So, it was not just
a place for the Beatles to leave. On every index of deprivation, with the possible
exception of culture, Liverpool scores highly. Like Glasgow, however, Liverpool has an
impressive mercantile heritage of architecture and bourgeois arts venues as well as
a great tradition of popular culture. It might also lay claim to being the oldest multi
cultural city in Britain, with a longstanding relation to the Atlantic’s black diaspora
(Gilroy, 1993) as well Irish and other Celtic communities.
The Liverpool Culture Company has great plans for 2008. There are major flagship
developments such as the ‘Fourth Grace’, a futuristic centre for art and culture on
the waterfront; the Paradise Street retail development; and a new tram system. The
Capital of Culture programme has multiple purposes of which the Culture Company is
well aware; so urban development for economic growth is combined with strategies for