Galway’s 2020 City of Culture needed €100m of State funding to guarantee success, according to a new study.
Although Storm Ciara and Covid may have put the kibosh on the city and county’s ill-fated cultural celebration, a comparative analysis with successful European City of Culture experiences, such as in Glasgow, Liverpool and Aarhus, has highlighted deeper issues, including funding.
Galway’s programme of events cost tax payers and local rates payers €23.1m. New research by University of Galway academic Patrick Collins shows the most successful City of Culture experiences – over a range of metrics – usually received national funding of five times more than the figure raised locally.
“Looking at cities like Liverpool, Glasgow and Hull, the British government invested an average of five times more than local fundraising, so yes – it’s fair to say what Galway managed to put toward 2020 just wasn’t enough,” says Mr Collins. Most of this expenditure was invested during bid processes prior to these cities winning national or international city of culture celebrations, and most of it went into public realm enhancements and physical infrastructure.
“After Galway 2020 people were noting the lack of physical infrastructure left afterwards, but that’s not always the best metric.
In the cities that do have new galleries, theatres and physical cultural spaces to show for their time as a city of culture, it’s often the case that they came from investment beforehand, not afterwards.”
“There is also the dilemma of the white elephant where cities in Europe – often peripheral like Galway – are left with things like unused opera houses after the celebrations are gone.” Collins offers Seville in Spain as an example.
Collins is at pains to point out that it is inaccurate to do a proper, academic analysis of Galway 2020, because Covid meant it was impossible to carry out the programme of events that was planned. The economic geographer says that in his opinion what the organisers managed to pull-off during a global pandemic is “impressive”.
Collins launched his third book this week: Galway: Making a Capital of Culture (Orpen Press, €17 ) which surveys the development of Galway as an Irish cultural touchstone over the past 100 years. The book charts Galway’s important cultural status since the foundation of the State as a physical location where the Gaelic Revival and Irish language resurgence intersected, and the creative economy which evolved from that starting point.
Galway may be an important case study for political, cultural, planning and economic policy makers worldwide, according to the book. However Collins sounds a note of warning too: Galway has moved from a city of cultural revival to cultural tourism to what he now labels cultural “festivalisation”.
The city and region has enjoyed huge economic benefit from its creative classes, but there has been a “hollowing out” of the ranks of artists in Galway and the wider western region. Collins explains this as an observation that although the city has a cohort of “comfortable” creative types in the over-60 age bracket, and plenty of young up-and-coming cultural producers, the ranks of people in their middle age making a living from the arts is much reduced.
“This could become a serious problem if Galway becomes a location for B-list musicians to come for gigs unless we offer support for young artists to stay in Galway and try and make a living here.”
In a post mortem review of the Galway 2020 European City of Culture held by city council officials last year, it was revealed that the limited company set up to run the event was still in operation and may be used to access EU and cross-border funding streams.
Collins worries about the threat of neoliberal economics on Galway’s cultural status, and how the city should aim to avoid ‘Disneyfication’ of its cultural capital.
Galway: Making a Capital of Culture will be launched this evening, November 30, in the Alcantara Building, Bonham Quay, by Patricia Forde, Laureate na nÓg.
