Abstract: Since its inception, and particularly since Glasgow hosted the event in 1990, the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) has increasingly come to be viewed by host cities as a tool to regenerate, rebrand and reposition themselves in cultural and economic terms. In recent years this has resulted in a predictable set of conflicts over cultural ownership, social inclusion and economics/arts dichotomies. In this paper, the author argues that these problems lie at the core of the ECOC itself, in that it has multiple objectives which are not mutually rei...
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Topics:
Political economy
Media studies