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Warszawa 2016
What is set in motion once a city decides to seek the title, and what happens when that bid is not successful?
Warszawa's artistic director was most vehement about the need for the criteria of selection of a city should not be so strict or concrete, so as to allow a city to give what he calls a 'creative answer'. Dealing with freedom in terms of interpretation is certainly a valid point, and quite the challenge.
Within the final selection round Warszawa was one of the five cities, but as political capital the question was if the city has really a chance against the others, and for sure against the secret favorite, namely Wroclaw. Insiders of Polish history acknowledge for a very long period of time Krakow was really considered to be the cultural capital, but in the post war years, that is after 1945, that ignored what took place in Wroclaw, or the former Breslau. Once that city had ejected 1 million Germans and was resettled by mainly Polish people coming from Eastern Poland, this chance to start anew in a strange environment meant another kind of challenge. The experiences made formed not only language and visionary aspects within the theatre but had also a tremendous impact upon a basic feeling that here was a city with which everyone could identify. It was amazing to hear how many had well wishes for Wroclaw. Warszawa by comparison was not given that gesture of immediate support. It was viewed as the political capital which had taken too much from the rest of Poland throughout the rules of various regimes and was in itself too fragmented to be able to present something like a cohesive whole in terms of culture. That is a rough estimate why the city did not make it.
Naturally there are many other reasons forthcoming and which can be analysed. One example is just following announcement about how the city prepared itself. For the role of NGOs was a matter of interest especially due to the influx of EU funds and the need to find organisations which could implement European projects in partnerships with others. But this is not necessarily a matter of culture even though civil society constitutes itself mainly on NGOs even if theatre companies or film studies but also converted breweries into cultural centres operate on a similar but still different principle. That Poland was becoming a dynamic economy with regulations being changed to adapt to the new circumstances, that was something any outsider could observe. But still the intracies of politics and society is something else, and more so the question what happened to that outpour of creativity which made possible Solidarnosc? Once martial law was declared in 1981, it smothered and even killed this creativity. It was a huge set back and left the cultural elite of the country in jail, or else in hiding, if not in exile. Warszawa was the centre of the powerful destruction and its local population had to face quite other, more internal contradictions which by comparison the people in Gdansk could handle differently insofar as their bid shows it was a matter of realignment of their relationship to Warszawa as power centre and not so much within their own city. What is meant if oppressor and victim are too closely intermeshed, it is much more difficult to find the right distance and to begin the work of redemption.
Looking back to the time when the five cities came together for the final selection by a jury consisting of seven European experts and six national experts, it seems that Warszawa was not as well prepared to take up the challenge of representing a country which wanted to put behind an ugly past and get on with life. For this a different approach was needed to link culture to the economy, and more so to what would be the European dimension of it all. For further analysis as to why Wroclaw got the designation in the end and not Warszawa or none of the other three Polish cities like Gdansk, Lublin or Katowice, the different bids have to be compared as to where each city had arrived at that decisive moment. Certainly what mattered as well is a city managed to present itself to the jury in a way which can be considered a bit 'sexy' since attractivity does depend on such factors - at least, this is what someone working of the team of San Sebastian 2016 said after having met the jury when visiting the city before the final decision. Small and bigs things help and it is finally an art on how to combine the right factors at the right moment. Apart from that it is still an open challenge on how each city meets the criteria set forth by the European Commission, how the Jury will judge and what is so to speak 'lying in the air' so obvious to see and still many do not see since the familiar has remained according to Hegel up to now as the big unknown. In the Polish selection that was surely Wroclaw as the unknown known factor and therefore most decisive in which direction the choice would go.
Debates Warsaw - European Capital of Culture 2016
Four of the debates are invitations to a dialogue aimed at four sectors - NGOs, managers of culture, tourism and business. The conversation is on the one hand, to indicate the benefits of granting the title of the European Capital of Culture for each group. On the other hand, the debate is to show the ways and means by which those sectors can involve themselves in the efforts aimed at gaining the title, as well as to clarify their expectations.
The debates are organized by the Representative of the Mayor of Warsaw for matters connected with the preparations for the competition for the title of European Capital of Culture in 2016, Ewa Czeszejko-Sochacka and Citydoping Group.
The first two debates were attended by foreign experts who are working with the city of Warsaw on the ECC 2016 project: Tom Fleming and Mary McCarthy.
Mary McCarthy, between 2002-2005 was the director of the winning program of Cork - European Capital of Culture Cork 2005; in the years 2007 to 2008 she acted as an international expert on behalf of the Council of Europe's candidate city evaluation committee for the European Capital of Culture for 2012 and 2013 and is a specialist in the field of cultural policy as well as a national and international expert in the field of art and culture;
Tom Fleming co-founded a cultural program for Guimaraes, a Portugese city which will be European Capital of Culture in 2012, specializes in cultural economics and creative industry research, strategy and policy, and is founder and CEO of Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy as well as Adviser to the Council of Europe on cultural policy. He is also the author and co-author of numerous surveys and reports, including: National Design Challenge for Schools: Business Model Development (2010), Developing Sheffield ’ s UK City of Culture 2013 bid (2009), Creative Industries Development in the Northern Portugal Region (2009).
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