European Capital of Culture Panel

After six phenomenally intense years, my mandate as a member of the European Capital of Culture Selection and Monitoring Panel has come to an end.

This has been an extraordinary time and the role has seen me through major changes for Europe that have had a profound impact on me at a personal and professional level.

The immediate effect of Brexit is the most obvious example, given I live and work in the UK since 2001, but have always done so with my sights firmly planted throughout Europe and beyond. I have valued immensely the opportunity to dedicate considerable and energy to this Panel, overviewing the ECoC journeys of so many European cities and regions.

This role has provided invaluable insights that complement well my long-term research into the impact and legacy of hosting an ECoC. I started my research back in 2001, focusing on the ten-year legacy of Glasgow 1990, and continued with the extraordinarily ambitious Impacts 08 research programme on the lead-up, hosting and legacy of Liverpool 2008. I also had the privilege to review the first 30 years of this initiative and the experiences of its first 60 host cities for the European Parliament; this was a much-needed exercise that I trust can be revisited and updated soon.

The ECoC programme provides one of the richest collections of major cultural event-hosting experiences in the world. The variety of cities hosting the initiative, combined with their relative geographical proximity and their unifying European theme, offers important grounds for comparative research and learning. This is a significant base to extract key lessons and reflect about what is meant by the European project, a topic that continues to be time-critical.

I will list here the ECoC editions I have had the pleasure to oversee directly either in my monitoring or selection panel capacity over the years: ?

Rijeka and Galway 2020; Novi Sad, Esch & Kaunas 2022; Elefsina, Timisoara and Veszprem 2023;

Bad-Ischl, Bodo & Tartu 2024; Chemnitz & Nova Gorica 2025; Oulu & Trencin 2027; Evora & Liepaja 2027.

In all cases, ECoC teams have had to pioneer techniques and solutions to challenges their cities had never faced before with such intensity. From advancing longitudinal cultural strategies for the first time, to operating in a fully transversal manner across sectors, engaging their communities in sustainable ways, daring become properly international or – of course, since 2020 – responding to a pandemic while saving room for optimism and celebration.

I thank my Panel colleagues for their insights and commitment to the role. We have learned so much from each other. I also want to thank the European Commission and, in particular, the ECoC liaison lead, Sylvain Pasqua, for their continued efforts to maintain and protect the standards of this initiative in an ever-changing landscape for cultural programming.

As always, I will continue documenting, comparing, labelling and codifying experiences, assessing how ECoCs fare alongside other international events across the globe. And I will continue to be impressed by how much cities, their people and communities can achieve when they believe in themselves.

Que así siga.