Tag Archives: EU

Galway 2020 is prepared to launch

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Galway have announced their European Capital of Culture programme for 2020. They share the title with Rijeka.  I have a soft spot for both:  back in 2016 I chaired the selection panels which recommended the two cities.  Rijeka have launched their programme in an innovative Time Out edition.

Galway beat off three other Irish cities for the title. Dublin in the first round and then Limerick and an imaginatively named Three Sisters ( a combined bid from Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny).  The ten members of the panel, from ten different EU member states, were not unanimous in their choice but Galway convinced a majority. Their report is online. 

The bid was based on a  100 page “bidbook” (based on a set of questions common to all bidders) and a presentation to the panel.    Galway surprised us by handing out VR headsets (first time I think any of us had used one) and showing us a VR film.  Why?  Because a key part of their bid, the innovative bit, was their aim to be the first digital and virtual European Capital of Culture.

The bidbook is not simply a sales pitch; it becomes the de facto contract for the title holder. Why?  Several reasons.  Firstly it would be extremely unfair to the unsuccessful cities if a title holder cleared off and did something different  “But you won on the promise of X and are delivering Y”? makes the Vote Leave promises look sane. The book also provides the monitoring panel (another group of international experts some also from the selection panel) a touchstone to see how the city is progressively implementing the project.   It is expected that there will be some variation from the projects in the bid-book: partners disappear or drop out, budgets are redrawn, new projects and partners come into play.  But generally most of the bid-book should take place.

So how does the programme match up to the bid-book promises?  The journey from 2016 to now has been, shall we say, bumpy. This is not unusual in an ECOC (sorry for the acronym).  Almost predictably Galway’s management has fallen over two of the standard hurdles which have tripped many previous ECOCs.

Firstly personal, at Board, CEO and Artistic Director level.  We can go back to Liverpool in 2008 for the mother of all personnel and political problems from its selection in 2003 until Phil Redmond taking control very close to the 2008 year.  Since then Maribor 2012, Donostia San Sebastian 2016, Plzen 2016, Leeuwarden 2018, Aarhus 2017, Valletta 2018 and more have lost a CEO and/or both an Artistic Director during the build up period.   Political interference, misunderstanding of the nature of an ECOC, poor selection, the reasons are numerous, never quite the same.

Secondly money.  Again most ECOCs fail to meet the financial forecasts (hopes?) set out in the bidbook.  Selection panels are alert to this.  In Galway’s case the panel reported its concern that the private funding aspiration, at over 15% of the total, was rarely achieved.  Press reports indicate a pending shortfall in Galway. Public sector funding often also falls short as national, regional and city funding does not quite match up to their initial hopes.

So nothing new, Galway simply did not learn from previous ECOCs.    That is water under the bridge but it means more effective PR before the opening to overcome the negative impressions (until the final evaluation which I hope will follow the excellent evaluation of Limerick, Irish Capital of Culture in 2014, carried out by the then Ministry of Arts, and the independent  ECOC evaluations of ECORYS). I find evaluations by local universities unconvincing and too orientated to pleasing the management and local funders. Too often they are statistical reports with little critical analysis.

The programme?   Give a sound management team €30m plus, a few years lead in and a good programme surely follows.  There are enough artists to fill a years programme; at the lowest end simply putting the standard festivals into the programme fills a lot of pages.   An ECOC should be more.  In many ways an ECOC, linked to a city’s cultural strategy over the following few years, should be saying to the local arts scene that it needs to step-change for the future, the current business as usual needs shaking up.  The local arts scene often think an ECOC is an opportunity for more money for them to do what they are doing now.   Wrong.  An ECOC is strategically instrumental.  It is not a marketing exercise for the city, although the tourist business will pick it up.  It is an opportunity to change the city.  And over time, not over one year.  Take perhaps the most holistic city development taking in an ECOC: Lille in 2004.  Still changing, still developing after more than 20 years.  And not just with periodic spectacles.

The Galway programme follows ,on the surface, the proposals in the bidbook.  Same project titles, but it seems they have been slimmed down.  Many of the more innovative elements are missing or downplayed.   A shortfall in funding?  Too adventurous? Various managers not up to it (a common ECOC problem between selection and delivery which is why most ECOCs now run extensive cultural management training programmes).  Is the programme international enough?  To me that is a fundamental issue.  It is why an ECOC is radically different from a national capital of culture (like Limerick 2014, Derry 2013, Hull 2017).  They have narrower criteria and objectives.  It is difficult to see the internationalism in the programme.  There is a page of international names but are these who have helped on the way or are actually providing content during the year?  The recent norm is that well over half of the events in an ECOC are international (and the further away the better).

One key sentence in ECOC formal reports is: an ECOC is not just about promoting your own city but increasing the awareness of the diversity of European cultures in your own city. Note the plural.  One key point made by Galway in the selection was that 24% of the residents are New Irish.  I can’t see a corresponding engagement of them in the programme or even in the list of staff of the ECOC.   I can’t see, but this could be in a secondary programme, much debate about the cultural implications of Brexit.  This is perhaps one of the key European issues which needs discussion in an ECOC in Ireland.

A major legacy of many ECOCs has been that the local arts managers have used the event to pioneer new international partnerships and break new ground.  I can’t see this from the programme.   I hope the normal festivals are different in scale and content to their previous incarnations. “International Festivals” should surely be totally international!  One standard question of the selection panel used to be ” How will your festivals be different in the ECOC year?”.

The ECOC year is about to start.  Time to watch, time to enjoy.  Time soon for the city administration to sit down, with many others, to plan.. and finance.. the legacies. The bidbook listed many to be used as starting points.  Will Galway follow the way of some ECOCs and fold in December 2020 and disappear or will  the cultural life in Galway in 2021 be demonstrably different from that in 2019?  And I don’t mean tourists but artists, youth groups,  arts in school, participatory and community arts, the creative industries, attendance at arts events (and not counting passive attendance at spectacles). And will people have a wider understanding of the other lesser used languages in Europe alongside a growth in Gaelic?   Twenty years, and longer, from now journalists will still be describing Galway as a European Capital of Culture, not just in the tourism pages.  It is a brand which requires constant  attention.  Time will tell.

 

Labour won’t win in 2020 by re-running 2015

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Labour lost the general election in 2015.  A leadership election is underway.  Candidates are writing their manifestos. Is it too early?  Will the candidates be too tempted to re-run 2015 rather than look ahead to 2020.  The political landscape will change. Here are a few thoughts.

Five more years of a Tory government, unhindered by any Liberal Democrat brake, and in hock to the more right-wing members of the Tory party, will mean a harsher landscape.  Not just fox-hunting but abortion restrictions (and I suspect a few Tories will be looking longingly at Orban’s attempt to restore capital punishment in Hungary).  More banks, more in poverty, greater “security” surveillance.  We will be spending billions on the four Tridents. We will have an even more authoritarian society, officially sanctioned.

The Tory leader in 2020 is likely to be from George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Theresa May.  Will they skip a generation after Cameron goes, probably in 2018?  Doubt it. Well-known senior figures appealing to the Tory heartlands.

Public finances will still be in a mess. Osborne’s forecasts on both debt and deficit have been proved wrong; there is no reason to expect any change. There will still be “no money”.  More years of stringent cuts.  It’s difficult to see how significantly more full wage jobs can be created so the tax take won’t increase to mitigate cuts.

The public sector ethos will be further weakened. Not just through out-sourcing, privatisation and ” public sector social entrepreneurialism”.  Top managers in the public sector will be required to operate as private sector equivalents. The internal culture of the delivery arms of the public sector will drastically change. TTIP and ISDS will prevent the re-nationalisation of public sector contracts.

The Scottish Parliament, from 2016, will be firmly in the nationalist camp. It is hard to foresee Jim Murphy (let alone the old school of Scottish Labour) turning the electoral prospects around in a short time.  As Spain has seen with Cataluña a nationalist mind-set always wants more.

Osborne’s “northern powerhouses”, led by Manchester, will be in full swing. Devolution in England will be underway mostly led by Labour councils and they will want, and deserve, more. Power may be devolved but in reality in many cases it simply means power to implement more cuts to local government. Bye bye not just libraries but many areas of local services. No way that the Tories will restore any form of sensible London government.

And looming over all of these changes will be the defining political topic of the next five years: the in/out EU referendum.  Polls may indicate a “stay in” majority but as we have seen polls are not at their most brilliant.  The lesson from the Scottish Independence referendum is that even a seemingly clear 55/45 division does not end the debate.   A “stay in” vote may not end the question; UKIP and the right-wing Tories will continue for a second chance in the 2020s. Will we see Theresa May leading a UKIP/Tory grouping in 2020 pledging to reverse the “stay in” vote?  Or an Osborne  (perhaps even the bend in the wind Johnson) leading a “happy to be in” a reformed EU?

A “leave” vote in 2017 leads to two years of negotiation of the terms of the exit (the Treaty sets a time limit).  Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will be up in arms if they have been outvoted by the English.  Constitutional turmoil.  How does that stack up in 2020?

In my view Labour leadership candidates will find it easy to outline their social and local policy positions; obviously with different priorities. This is their comfort zone.  But the overwhelmingly strategic political decision they have to take is on how active in the next two years they will be for a pro-EU vote.  No more fence-sitting.

Yes, this means tackling the concerns over migration in areas not used to it and not pandering in UKIP-lite style. It means jettisoning the “Controls on immigration” mug. It means leadership from the front not from the backroom focus group. We all want to reform the EU. If it was being invented now we would not build the current version. But it is the one we have. The 2020 election depends on the EU referendum. Time to step up and be counted: the UK’s future lies unequivocally as a member of the EU. That’s what a potential prime minister in 2020 needs to project.

 

We’re all getting old together…

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The EU never ceases to amaze me.  I am an ardent pro-European, a very strange beast for a Brit. My first departure from the Labour Party came in the  1975 referendum on the UK’s membership: not done for a student politician to be in favour of the YES vote to stay in.   (Iraq before you ask).

But at times it is demoralising to be so easily deflated by another Euro-idea.  I picked up a leaflet in Brussels today extolling  the ” European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations”.  It’s worth looking at that phrase again…go back and slowly digest every word and add your own interpretation. 

“Older people are a large and growing part of the EU’s population. This rapidly ageing population is changing our societies in important and fundamental ways. Unfortunately, ageing is often seen as a problem, presenting challenges to the age structure of the workplace, the sustainability of social protection schemes and the organisation and financing of health and long-term care services”

Well they got that right.  In Spain the government ends free prescriptions for pensioners; in many countries pensions are frozen or cut as part of the “we are all in this together” austerity measures required by the neo-cons and Germans (for different reasons but same effect). The UK changes a tax benefit,, the granny tax.  The pension age is increased so we need to work longer, normally for lower benefits whilst the younger generation campaign for the older workers to leave the workforce in order for jobs to become available to the NEET  and 800 euro generations.  Discussions centre on how benefits, paid  in advance by workers over their working careers, should now be withdrawn.   Plans and schemes to attract older people to cultural activities are withdrawn (free transport  schemes, educational programmes); care centres closed or privatised.

Governments must have signed up to the idea of the year.  Shame no-one told them they were meant to actually do something positive.  My best wishes to the hundreds of networks and organisations working in the field, many of them facing budget cuts as part of the “there is no alternative to pain” policies.

Me?  I’ll age actively, but slowly.

More Europe

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The current eurozone financial crisis prompts calls for “more Europe”.  About time too.  For over 60 years Europhiles, and I count myself as one of them, have paid lip service to the declaration “an ever closer and deeper Union”.  It has been so much part of the Euro-mantra that is was on automatic pilot.  It never appealed to the Brits of course. They had they own micro-triumph in the drafting process of the Lisbon Constitution/Treaty which slighty watered down the phrase.

But it remains part of the Euro-DNA.  Of course it was meant to be achieved by technocratic stealth through the Monnet method: little bit at a time, keep below the radar, slow accretion, don’t upset anyone (and don’t tell the voters.. the original sin of the grand old men of the founding fathers).

The euro crisis has flushed everything out into the open.  A Euro monetary union which allowed the largest country, Germany, to ignore its own rules within a year or two of starting, surprisingly finds itself unworkable at the first real sign of trouble.

Fiscal and transfer unions are intregal parts of a monetary union.  Now is the time for ever deeper and closer to be realised.  And very quickly.

The Polish Foreign Ministers’ speech in Berlin sets out quite clearly the path ahead. Read it and lets start the ball rolling.