Join us in this cultural journey

John Kennedy, director Cork 2005, says Cork has a golden opportunity to put itself on European cultural map.

GLASGOW, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Thessalonica, Madrid, Graz, Lille, Genoa, Cork, Rotterdam, Porto, Salamanca, Avignon, Helsinki, Prague.

Yes, you did hear Cork mentioned in this list of exceptional European cities. All these cities have held the designation as European City of Culture. Cork proudly takes her place amongst them and in January becomes the first European Capital of Culture. This is a generational opportunity; a local challenge; a national endeavour; a European celebration of international significance. The eyes of Europe will be focused on us for a year. Through our programme of events, we are going to show that we can hold that gaze and return it with characteristic Cork and Irish vigour.

Cork is a city of ideas and a city of individuals. At the core of Cork 2005: European Capital of Culture is an ethos that demonstrates respect for the creative idea and respect for the individual. The programme for 2005 has emerged from the creative ideas of hundreds of individuals and is based on an inclusive interpretation that will allow Cork celebrate the diversity of culture throughout 2005. We will celebrate culture as art, drama and music as much as we celebrate the culture of sport, food and even the contemporary life that goes on in the streets of this historic city. It is a programme of the city, but no less of Ireland and of Europe. A tall order, perhaps, but one on which Cork can deliver.

The precedent is there; Cork has welcomed strangers for generations. The harbour provided safety and succour to seafarers over the centuries. Ships took on sustenance here before the long Atlantic voyage; ships returning to Europe received their first welcome home here. Successful modern cities depend on an alliance of visionary civic leadership, visionary commercial leadership and visionary cultural leadership. This exists in Cork. This important European designation provides the focus through which the entire city will operate as one. The tenure as European Capital of Culture presents the opportunity to continue being a city that provides sustenance, succour, a welcome, and through an extraordinary cultural programme, a signpost to our European neighbours. To be the first city operating under the new European Capital of Culture designation, is a great honour. We salute the previous cities and unashamedly lay down a challenge to our successors. In keeping with the spirit of adventure, idealism and hope contained within this European designation we hope that they might adopt certain elements of our own year: to look at the strength of the Public Call for ideas, to value the individual and to honour the creative idea.

Ireland sits proudly at the edge of Europe. If you look out of Cork harbour, you look towards the heart of Europe. (On a really clear day you will see the spires of Paris, Strasburg, Munich, and Vienna.) We are on the periphery of a great continent. If we have a core proposition to advance through our hosting of the designation it is this; Europe must renew itself from the peripheries inward, not from the centre outward. It is our responsibility, as the holders of this important designation, to show our wider European family the path to themselves from the outside in. This country, and in particular this city, has the pedigree to do this.

To compile a programme that is of Cork, of Ireland and of Europe is a tall order. However, as European Capital of Culture it is our duty and responsibility to do so. Cork announcing to all that we are up to that responsibility; that we have the capacity to discharge that duty; that we not only can comment from our place on the periphery but also send a comment back to the heart of Europe and leave a mark of some significance there. I am strong in the belief that Cork can rightly take its place amongst Europe's cultural cities. We have revealed a taste of what is to come; an appetiser; a starter.

As this year unfolds, so will the full programme for Cork 2005: European capital of Culture.

Join in the journey with us.