No sooner have Beatriz Garcia’s feet touched the (Liverpool) ground again, but she’s off again to another presentation, this time in Italy. The Impacts 08 Director has been invited to take part in the Ravello Lab 09 culture and development forum, contributing in particular to a session titled ‘The European Capitals of Culture: cities like cultural industries?’ Next week things calm down a little, thankfully.
Dr Beatriz García, Director of the Impacts 08, was at the new Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum yesterday for the launch of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS)’s Science & Research Advisory Committee. She’s one of the few university-based experts appointed to the SRAC, which has been set up to advise on developments in science and technology and their implications for DCMS policies and priorities. Dr García’s expertise on culture-led regeneration and the impacts of major cultural events will be invaluable in helping the DCMS in finding ways to develop its scientific evidence base. The plan is for the committee to meet twice a year to cover high level cross-cutting issues, give an annual presentation to the DCMS Advisory Board, and present a report on science, technology and engineering issues to the Secretary of State every three years. A set of subject-specific, temporary working groups will also be set up to address the key issues identified by the SRAC.
Don’t let anyone convince you that academia is a boring, humdrum life of lectures and marking, punctuated by the odd faculty meeting. For Impacts 08 Director Beatriz Garcia is whooshing off to Brussels on the train at this very moment to take part in a TV debate on European Capitals of Culture. Up for discussion is how the whole project works, how cities are selected, and some of the critical aspects of hosting the title. The debate will be broadcast on the European Parliament’s online TV channel.
Now that we have a French speaker in the Impacts 08 office, I can finally get to the bottom of what ‘grand rapporteur’ Bernard Foccroulle was talking about at the end of the European Culture Forum in Brussels recently. Beatriz Garcia had told me that M Foccroulle had name-checked her presentation about Impacts 08, but though I found the French version of his closing remarks, I haven’t been able to get a translation. Into the breach stepped our multi-lingual new staff member Matti, on whose good authority we have it that M Foccroulle said:
‘Beatriz Garcia from Liverpool observed that ever since the European Capitals of Culture, those cultural operators who have the strongest medium and long-term impacts are those which are operating on a small scale. On the scale of cultural policy and enterprise policy, is this not a possible orientation: counting on a large number of small projects with a strong and innovative value and not merely spectacular projects?’
Well that’s a relief. Impacts 08 is an exemplar of developing a strong evidence base, and it’s not always the big cultural show-stoppers that make the most difference. Now I can sleep at night.
Matti Allam has joined the Impacts 08 team as our International Research Liaison Officer. She’ll be adapting our Liverpool Model into an international framework for use by future European Capitals of Culture, as well as other cities assessing the impact of major cultural initiatives. You can get in touch with Matti by emailing mallam@liverpool.ac.uk. Or find out more about what she’ll be working on here. And we’ll be posting a nice picture of her on our website soon…
Impacts 08 Director Beatriz García is making a keynote presentation at Revitalising Built Environments: Requalifying Old Places for New Uses, an event taking place in Istanbul from 12th-16th October. She’ll be discussing the long-term legacy of hosting the European City of Culture title in Glasgow 1990 and comparing the experience with that of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture in 2008. The presentation will examine the progression in culture-led regeneration narratives and strategies over three decades of UK-based cultural policy.
