City brand- and artistic community assemblage

This paper draws on Actor-Network (ANT) theory to research the relationship between the official city branding and local artistic practices of Rotterdam. ANT holds the view that the empirical world exists of all interaction between human or non-human actors that together create a network that is the assemblage of the social. The mixed method approach of qualitative document analysis, participant observations and interviews led to the following findings. Rotterdam’s branding practices exist of networks that that construct society through elements of branding theory, brand constructs, brand audiences with a specific role for citizen as a stakeholder in the city. Though more than that this leads to an integration of the worldviews of the city as a brand and the city as assembled by the local arts and culture community, the business oriented and economy focused approach of the city as a brand is perpetuated. Contrastingly, the arts and culture community of Rotterdam assemble the city through artistic endeavours and social networks that lead to the reinforcement of emotive relations to place in the form of place attachment and place identity. This paper concludes by stating that the two assemblages overlap only in limited ways in which they understand and produce the city, but they come together with a similar sense of place of Rotterdam. By shedding light on the way city branders and artistic communities interpret and ‘produce’ the city, these groups of people are better understood. The value here lies in bringing the different groups of citizens closer together for the benefit of the city as a whole.