Bidding for UK city of culture

Abstract

Purpose The UK city of culture (UKCoC) scheme developed out of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 and is synonymous with urban renewal. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges of bidding for this scheme. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with bid team members from four out of the five short-listed cities for the 2021 award. Respondents were situated across the country and, at the time, finalising their Stage 2 bids. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the responses. Findings The UKCoC scheme is a top-down scheme which is delivered “in place”. The danger of the top-down vision is that local people cannot often conceptualise what it might mean within the context of their own locality. The findings here suggest that bid team members are attempting to do this despite obvious time pressures. The research presented here suggests that cities are reconciling the top-down, criteria-led nature of the scheme with a real reflection on how to make that work for their locality which is distinctive. Social implications The UKCoC scheme has proved to galvanise communities to reflect on the nature of their places and think about what makes them unique in comparison to the other bidding cities. The bidding teams acknowledge the challenges of bidding but there is a sense that competing is worth the investment. Originality/value This paper offers a unique insight into a recent competitive placemaking scheme and reflects on how placemaking can potentially be reconciled as both top-down and place-based.

Reading relationally: a proposal for relational-comparative research concerning city/capital of culture events

“…7. See Cox and O'Brien (2012), Crepaz et al . (2014), Cunningham and Platt (2018), Hansen and Laursen (2015), Hudson et al . (2017), O'Brien (2011), O'Brien and Impacts08 (2010) and Wahlin et al .…”

Creating the baseline: data relations and frictions of UK City of Culture evaluation

“…Extensive academic and policy analysis has examined city of culture competitions and regeneration relating to specific cities (Collins, 2020; Cunningham and Platt, 2019; Garcia et al ., 2009; Richards, 2015). In examining the European Capital of Europe (ECoC) programme, Richards (2015) notes how early impact studies focussed on economic impact and that subsequent research on Luxembourg (2007) and Liverpool (2008) included long-term analysis and attention to cultural, economic, social, impact and tourism impacts.…”

“…This is captured in the ministerial foreword by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the guidance for bidders for the UKCoC 2025 competition (Dowden in DCMS, 2021). While critical cultural policy analysis has questioned the extent to which a city can repeat the experiences of a previous city (Cox and O'Brien, 2012), there is nevertheless a referential dimension in which the impacts identified by previous host cities become indicators of success and explicit points of reference for bidding cities (see findings from Cunningham and Platt, 2019, on interviews with representatives from bidding teams). In noting the instructional function of evaluation and how it is engaged with by UKCoC bidding cities, two issues concerning evaluation practices follow: First, who is doing the evaluation and why?…”