Cork must use City of Culture opportunity

CORK’S status as European City of Culture in 2005 is a major cultural and structural development opportunity and should not be missed, according to Robert Palmer, the former director of cultural affairs in Glasgow.

"You can either use this moment or allow it to pass," he told the city's business and political leaders attending a major conference in the city yesterday.

Cities, he said, sometimes need a trigger to grow.

These can be good and bad. Cork's trigger is the European City of Culture.

"There is a lot of talk about change in cities large ones like New York and London, and small ones like Cork. The truth about change in cities, is that there are only two possibilities. Because cities never stand still. Cities can either grow and prosper, or they decline and decay.

"There is a choice.

"These days, many cities that are prospering like to speak of their creativity and innovation. But cities are only truly creative if the people who live and work in them, and the people who run them, actually value creativity."

Mr Palmer said cities cannot remain creative unless there in a continued renewal of their creative bloodstream.

"For example, for ten years I worked in the city of Glasgow in Scotland, whose successful transformation from being one of the most problematic cities in the UK to becoming the cultural capital of Europe [in 1990] had a great deal to do with the leadership of creativity.

"In Glasgow, it was the visionary political leaders, who joined forces with the visionary business leaders and the visionary cultural leaders. A creative city fosters a milieu of collective or multiple leadership."

Glasgow, he said was only one such European city; others that underwent major transformations included Barcelona, Bilbao, Prague, Marseilles and Rotterdam.