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European Cultural Capital Report 2
This report, edited by Robert Palmer and Greg Richards, is the second in a series of updates to the original Palmer Report, which was produced for the European Commission in 2004.
The European Capital of Culture event (ECOC) is arguably one of the most successful EU cultural programmes, attracting increasing interest from policy makers, academics and the media every year. As more and more cities are involved in competing for the ECOC title, there is also a growing need for information about and evaluation of the event and the host cities. The European Union is giving the ECOC action significant attention. The bidding process, the selection of the short-list of candidate cities and the final selection of the winning city itself attracts substantial political and media attention. From 2009, the European Commission will be allocating increased funds to the ECOC programme, highlighting its importance as a major EU emblematic activity.
The European Cultural Capital Report aims to update the wealth of information contained in the original ECOC evaluation report (the Palmer Report) produced by Robert Palmer, Greg Richards and other experts for the European Commission (Palmer-Rae 2004). In doing so, it aims to provide essential information for those organising, implementing and evaluating the ECOC.
The ECOC programme has changed radically in terms of its aims, scope and scale in recent years. The expansion of the programme to the new Member States of the European Union in particular has brought a whole raft of new countries into the ECOC, and with it new visions and challenges. The 2007 ECOC in Sibiu was the first of the ECOC in the wave of new Member States admitted to the EU after 2004, even though the selection was made under the old rules. The Sibiu experience offers some interesting pointers for other new participants in the programme, and the event was recently evaluated in a report produced by Greg Richards and Ilie Rotariu (Richards and Rotariu 2008).
Given the scale and speed of change affecting the ECOC, this latest edition of the European Cultural Capital Report contains a news section, which reviews the latest developments in the bidding, selection and organisation of the ECOC. We review some of the key developments in the ECOC in present, future and candidate cities, looking at the way in which the event is being developed, organized and marketed.
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