Warnings over legacy of Culture Year for city
A LEADING regeneration expert yesterday warned that Liverpool had unrealistic expectations of a successful Capital of Culture year.
Dr Beatriz Garcia is the director of Impacts 08, which is a five-year research project evaluating the effects of the culture award.
Speaking at the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool, Dr Garcia said that Liverpool should expect next year to be tough, as it adjusts to not being in the spotlight.
She said: “We will see that 2009 will be a difficult period, there may be a lull. Investment will be lower than during the Capital of Culture period, but not necessarily as low as before the bid was successful.
“We will not be the centre of attention any more.”
However, Dr Garcia, who previously led a major research project looking into the long-term cultural legacy of Glasgow becoming the 1990 European City of Culture, said there shouldn’t be a rush to judge the success of 2008.
“We cannot judge the success on just a year,” she said. “The decision right now is what direction is the city going in, for example in the creative industries.
“Will the talent in the city leave after 2008? We will have to look at it over the next three to four years.
“We have to move away from statistics. In Glasgow, there were nowhere near the same level of expectations.
“Liverpool has seen much higher expectation over much larger social issues, not just around cultural activities.”
Culture supremo Phil Redmond, who jokingly described his job as “to spin what Beatriz says”, argued that the Capital of Culture had been an important catalyst for change.
“The politicians decided they would use 2008 as a focal point for every other agenda, including Grosvenor, the [Echo] Arena and Blue Coat,” he said. “We cannot tackle the social problems in the city by singing a song or by building new flats. But we can use it by taking Grosvenor’s £1bn, which will have created 5,000 jobs.
“It’s not going to fix anything, but it will give people the confidence to enter the debate.”
Mr Redmond, speaking at a debate on public involvement in the city’s cultural changes, said he believed that it would take five to 10 years before the legacy of the Capital of Culture was clear.
