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Winning the designation to host the European Capital of Culture is a prestigious honour for any European city. It provides a city with the opportunity to celebrate its culture, to embrace other cultures, and to re-position itself, as well as attracting visitors and increasing cultural participation. The honour also brings with it an inevitably sharpened critical focus on the host city, writes John Kennedy.

Cork, one of Europe?s most westerly cities and a port city with a population of 140,000, will host the European Capital of Culture in 2005. Awarded the designation in May 2002, Cork, like all previous cities of culture, immediately celebrated, heaved a sigh of relief and then swiftly began the process of setting up an independent company, with a board of directors to run the project. This team was assembled in late 2002 and the first task of the initial three appointees was to define how Cork, as a small but dynamic city on the periphery of Europe, was going to interpret the designation. The team quickly undertook a re-assessment of the city?s bid document (submitted to the EU in 2000) and it was decided that, while keeping the spirit of the bid document, we would re-imagine the projects for the year.

We invited members of the international jury who awarded the designation and other key national cultural experts to a meeting to debate the remit, the scope and relevant responsibility of the Cork 2005 company, bearing in mind the short planning period of two years. We asked who this year of culture was for. How should it contribute to the national cultural debate, as well as to Europe and beyond? We questioned how we would incorporate the past while focusing on the future and how we would reflect Ireland?s changing cultural landscape ? a complex challenge for a country that has a defined and successful international image. From the very beginning, we faced the challenge that the designation itself is frequently misunderstood. Different stakeholders held vastly different expectations, and it was critical that these were debated openly.

From the very beginning, Cork 2005 limited its scope to programming, delivering and marketing a programme of events for the year. Regeneration remained the responsibility of the city council, who have spent in the region of ?196m in city renewals, road resurfacing and historic city centre restoration as well as cultural building refurbishment. There is no doubt that 2005 provided a very welcome opportunity for the city authorities to implement spending and to engage the co-operation of the private sector to ensure work was completed. There is a lot at stake: the media will descend and either praise or criticise the city. The long-term benefits can be enormous.

We decided from the beginning that the designation required an open model of development ? we wanted to democratise cultural participation. We decided to take a broad definition of culture. We resisted the temptation to follow the ?festival? model, as this would not be sustainable in a city the size of Cork over a year. We also decided to refuse models of cultural programming that begin with the idea of the passive consumer. We believe passionately that vibrant culture is a matter of doing, creating and understanding, and Ireland today is a place of dynamic cultural activity. With this in mind, Cork 2005 placed its trust in the artists and communities of Cork, the wider Europe and beyond. We put out a public call for ideas that would respond to the context of Cork, a city on the periphery; for ideas that would kindle a spirit of community; for ideas that would shine a spotlight on overlooked cultural activity; for ideas that would connect Cork to Europe and beyond.

We received more than 2,000 ideas, from far and wide. The programming team held hundreds of meetings with the public to talk about the feasibility of these ideas, and harvesting these into projects and a coherent programme has been the key task since. It was encouraging to have affirmed how much people wanted to have Cork communicate with other places rather than simply use the year to hold a mirror up to itself. People understood that this was a moment to demonstrate a spirit of idealism and adventure. Ninety-five per cent of our programme has come from the public call.

A total of 236 projects have been developed into our core programme, which is divided into eight categories: Architecture, Design and Visual Arts; Theatre and Performance; Music; Sport; Residencies, Research and Process; Literature, Publications and Conferences; Film Media and Sound; and Festivals. A number of these will be directly funded. Others will be offered assistance in sourcing funding, with our endorsement, enabling partnerships with other state and international agencies.

In the beginning we resisted setting out a theme; rather, we set out cultural aspirations. From the responses received, the concept of the ?City of Making? has emerged, demonstrating our embrace of the act of making. We have remained close to that place where art happens, close to creative individuals like visual artists, architects, poets and performers. For the entire year we mean to demonstrate that culture is personal. We intend to let artists speak, to hear film directors explain, to see ceramicists demonstrate; we intend to allow local communities to make, interrogate and curate. There is a strong community-wide tradition in Cork of public lectures, debates, seminars and demonstrations. Our programme reflects the diversity and rigour of debate of the issues affecting us: the urban landscape, heritage, society, the concept of home, the critique of sport.

Projects vary in scale from large outdoor theatre events involving four international companies in our ?Relocation? programme, to the Cork Mandala of Community Gardens, a project that is setting up community-managed gardens all over the city. We have resourced hundreds of residencies: cultural practitioners from all over the world have been invited to come and live in Cork for a period, to engage with our programme, our cultural practitioners and our public. International shows such as the brilliant ?Pillowman? by London?s National Theatre and Sol Pico?s ?La Donna Manca? will be staged. We are bringing together some of the world?s most influential writers ? Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Claudio Magris, to name but a few. And we?ll host Daniel Libeskind?s masterful ?Eighteen Turns?, a pavilion that will gleam and allow the public to feel and touch contemporary architecture. Our programme includes a great boat race ?Oceans to City? and we are restoring the lost tradition of our river?s Lee Swim.We have also commissioned several new books and publications to spark and ignite debate.

Cork, as a result of the designation, has a renewed city centre. It has a strengthened cultural infrastructure, a new Lewis Glucksman Gallery in our university, an extended museum in our park, a renewed and refurbished Triskel Arts Centre, a refurbished Everyman Palace Theatre and Opera House. Our cultural sector has been enabled to extend its programming reach to other national and international companies, and to commission and premier new works. We are aiming for a cultural re-positioning of the city. We want people to experience our programme and therefore experience Cork as a vibrant dynamic city where work of exceptional intent and standard is being made or shown.

Cork 2005 set out to create new networks between individuals and companies. There is plenty of evidence of the beginnings of these new relationships in the programme. That programme has now been returned into the public domain from which it originated and we invite the public to come witness, participate, celebrate and debate with us in Cork in 2005.

John Kennedy is Director of Cork 2005. t: 00 353 21 455 2005; w: http://www.cork2005.ie