Istanbul - Finally ready to be a European City of Culture in 2010
This energy is perhaps the first benefit which Istanbul has gained from its nomination as a European City of Culture for the year 2010.
This ECOC concept was launched in 1985 on the initiative of the Greek Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri. Conceived as a means of bringing citizens of European Union (at that time the European Community) closer together, it has recently been expanded to include cities from countries which are not members. Istanbul will be the 40th such City and was chosen in April 2006 – in preference to Kiev – together with Pécs of Hungary and Essen of Germany.
The Selection Committee complimented Turkey that:
“The bottom-up process, as well as the active role of civil society, were viewed as crucial assets of the proposal. The sustainable character of the programme, starting in 2007 and going beyond the ECOC year, was noted positively, as well as the intention to reach out to parts of the local population which would normally not be the primary target groups for cultural events.”
High praise, and indeed visitors to the website of Istanbul 2010, www.istanbul2010.org,
will find that the proposal prepared in 2005 comprised an impressive
cornucopia of plans and projects grouped around Aristotle's four
elements, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Today, these proposals remain
the base for the final programme, which is still being worked on.
Earth would
run from New Year 2010 until the first days of spring, March 20. The
proposal involves six exhibitions that show the values of the past
which have been preserved down to the present day and will be passed on
to future generations – “ancient values that take
root and send forth fresh leaves like the seeds of new
plants”, as the proposal puts it. The six are Mothers,
Goddesses Sultanas; Imperial Passions showing various
Sultans’ artworks; Istanbul Inspirations – 3
Operas, a compilation of works on Ottoman sultans by European
composers; performances of Ottoman palatial music, the so-called makam;
Istanbul costumes, with visual data on past eras; and IBM’s
Topkapi Palace Cyber Museum, akin to that developed for the Hermitage
Museum. Also proposed are plays and walking tours, including
‘7000 years at 7000 metres’, a walk round recently
renovated historical sites.
The Air
phase would then run to June 21. Events under the rubric Living
Together take the spiritual world as their theme, emphasising the
legacy of Anatolia in general and Istanbul in particular in nurturing
the values and holy places of the three great Abrahamic religions. The
underlying plan includes major symposia at Aghia Irini and Aghia Sophia
and on Islam and Humanitas, 40 days of street concerts, major stadium
concerts with U2, REM and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, tango events, more
walking, a theatre and a film festival, seminars between universities
and the public, and two documentaries, ‘Immigrants
– towards a common future’.
Next comes the Water
phase, running to September 22, with a multitude of activities on the
Bosphorus, The main exhibition on the schedule, Europe on the
Bosphorus, is an invitation to performance and plastic artists from
Europe to perform or exhibit on rafts which would be moored at
different points along the Bosphorus. Each European country would be
allocated a different floating pavilion. The proposal also involves a
parade of tall ships from all around the world, an exhibition of
paintings, and a celebration of the hamam (Turkish bath). There would
also be the traditional Istanbul music and jazz festivals as well as
upgraded festivals on the Prince’s Islands. With Ramadan
falling in August, various Ramadan events are being discussed,
including a competition to decide the best example of the writing in
lights known as mahya.
Emphasising the theme of cross-cultural cooperation will be the Danube
Bridge project. This involves a river boat leaving Germany in June and
serving as a floating exhibition of German, Hungarian and Turkish
visual artists and sculptors. For 60 days it would sail down the
Danube, stopping at cities where the artists from the three countries
would perform before arriving in Istanbul in September. Also proposed
is a cultural exchange programme for artistically talented primary and
middle school children from the three countries. A further project to
develop links between the three ECOC 2010 cities is the Three
Countries, Three Composers, Three Concerts.
The year would finish with Fire,
with this autumn phase to be “the inspiration for
forward-thinking projects which seek to create sustainable cultural
assets and urban renewal”. Such projects include the 11th
International Istanbul Biennial, an Architectural Biennial, programmes
on civic architecture and design, an International Student Triennial, a
“Dem(art)cracy Village” in a shanty town with this
linked to workshops for children from such districts, the Photo Bridge
photographic exhibition, a Conference of World Artists for Peace, and
more jazz and music.
This is supplemented by a communications strategy which the Selection
Committee praised as an “example to be followed by other
candidate cities.”
All in all, ambitious and impressive and causes one to ask why Istanbul
had to wait to be the 40th ECOC. Obviously not all earlier cities could
match this – and what a pity that the sister city to the
Eastern Rome was not Rome itself! But then Rome has never been chosen,
which shows that the criteria are not cultural
alone.
So who is paying for all the good work so far?
The answer is disturbing. Eventually, EU funds may be
available. But these may only be given to a designated authority, which
does not yet exist. Further, they are unlikely to exceed €0.5
million – and the total 2010 budget, including
refurbishments, is likely to be close to €150 million.
The Governor’s Office in Istanbul has provided funds which
have covered items like travel costs. But almost all the rest has been
done on a voluntary basis. A draft law which would have established a
structure for state funding has fallen victim to the Presidential and
General Elections and has now to be taken up again this autumn.
(Complicating this is that the law includes provisions for the
rebuilding of Ataturk Cultural Centre in Istanbul – and Rami
Barracks – which have disturbed traditionalists.) So all this
creative work has been done by representatives of state institutions or
volunteers – and there is an impressive list of these. The
Advisory Board has 85 members, the Executive Board 29, the Artistic
Advisory Board 43, the Project Evaluation Committee 15, and the
Communication Advisory Board 47. Egemen Bagis, MP for Istanbul, is
Chairman of the Advisory Board, and Nuri Colakoglu, Chairman and
General Coordinator of the Executive Board. But the number of people
involved indicate the likely difficulty of decision making.
A study carried out on the experiences of Bologna and Cork found the
main difficulties included “the timing and distribution of
projects, too many projects, inadequate communication, inadequate local
interest, a gap between the public and organizers, financial problems,
insufficient planning time, lack of interest from the business
community, and inadequate organisational structures in
place.” These are all risks but the potential benefits for
Istanbul – and its citizens – appear large:
“urban renewal is a definite positive result,”
writes the study.
For now, two full years remain. For those involved, it will probably be
a frustrating and tiring process, ridden by bureaucracy. But for those
of us who will live 2010, it is a fine prospect.
| Past European Capitals of Culture | |
| 1985: | Athens (Greece) |
| 1986: | Florence (Italy) |
| 1987: | Amsterdam (Netherlands) |
| 1988: | West Berlin (West Germany) |
| 1989: | Paris (France) |
| 1990: | Glasgow (United Kingdom) |
| 1991: | Dublin (Ireland) |
| 1992: | Madrid (Spain) |
| 1993: | Antwerp (Belgium) |
| 1994: | Lisbon (Portugal) |
| 1995: | Luxembourg (Luxembourg) |
| 1996: | Copenhagen (Denmark) |
| 1997: | Thessaloniki (Greece) |
| 1998: | Stockholm (Sweden) |
| 1999: | Weimar (Germany) |
| 2000: | Reykjavík (Iceland), Bergen (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Brussels (Belgium), Prague (Czech Republic), Krakow (Poland), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Avignon (France), Bologna (Italy) |
| 2001: | Porto (Portugal), Rotterdam (Netherlands) |
| 2002: | Bruges (Belgium), Salamanca (Spain) |
| 2003: | Graz (Austria) |
| 2004: | Genoa (Italy), Lille (France) |
| 2005: | Cork (Ireland) |
| 2006: | Patras (Greece) |
| 2007: | Luxembourg and greater region (Luxembourg), Sibiu (Romania) |
| Future European Capitals of Culture | |
| 2009: | Linz (Austria) - Vilnius (Lithuania) |
| 2010: | Istanbul (Turkey) - Pécs (Hungary) — Essen (Germany) |
| 2011: | Turku (Finland) - Tallinn (Estonia) |
| 2012: | Guimarães (Portugal) - Maribor (Slovenia) |
| 2013: | France - Slovakia |
| 2014: | Sweden - Latvia |
| 2015: | Belgium - Czech Republic |
| 2016: | Spain - Poland |
| 2017: | Denmark - Cyprus |
| 2018: | Netherlands - Malta |
| 2019: | Italy - Bulgaria |