Culture as a tool?

The Capital of Culture programme, first introduced by the European Union in 1985, has grown into a prestigious cultural event. Every year, one or several cities can acquire the title and organize a large number of cultural activities. Although the essence of the programme is a number of cultural activities, other (external) factors have gained importance such as economic development. Culture seems to have changed into a tool for regeneration projects. In this thesis, I try to find out whether this shift has actually taken place. The research question of this thesis therefore is: Has the focus of the European Capitals of Culture event shifted from cultural objectives towards economic objectives? The thesis is divided into two parts, a literature review and a research. The literature review focuses on the event itself and the change over the years of notions about the meaning of culture for society. In the research, cultural and economic objectives of a selection of cities are compared using content analysis. Since stated objectives in documents not always correspond to reality, I have tried to find out whether the objectives stated are reflected in the budgets of the event. Budgets of selected cities are compared on the bases of spending on the cultural programme proper versus spending on the programme as a whole. The outcome of the research gives an indication of a growing importance of economic objectives over cultural objectives. The outcome corresponds with the findings of the literature review. Especially the comparison based on the text on objectives in final reports indicates an increased use of words related to economic objectives in comparison to words related to cultural objectives. Although budget comparisons do not allow to trace a shift in objectives, the graphs do show an increasing amount of capital expenditure per city. According to Palmer and Richards (2007, 30), growing capital expenditure is the result of increased importance of economic development and urban regeneration. Nevertheless, the results need to be treated with care since they are based on documents which are sometimes difficult to compare and on budgets that differ in layout and detail. In the end, in order to mobilize necessary support, it is important for cities to focus on the economic effects of culture on a city. However, the original objectives of the ECOC programme should not be forgotten. A way to bring culture back to the centre of discussion would be to further develop ways to measure the cultural impact of the ECOC event.