Category: Major events

Why festivals & special events matter now more than ever

Article written for the Arts and Humanities Research Council After a year of on-and-off global lockdowns the need to gather and experience collective joy feels more urgent and pressing than ever. Festivals and outdoor cultural experiences offer us the chance to connect and feel part of a community in positive and inspiring ways. In this…

What Future for Festivals? Report

Final report of the Salzburg Global Seminar I co-curated in 2020, asking the question ‘What future for Festivals?’ The seminar involved weeks of intense discussion with festivals leaders and scholars from around the world. It was an intense and tough process as this event was supposed to take place in Salzburg in March of 2020,…

Impacts 18 Symposium Highlights

Find below highlights from our 10 year anniversary symposium, launching Impacts 08 ~ 18 | #Impacts18, the major research programme I have directed since 2006 on the impacts and long term legacy of hosting a European Capital of Culture. The Symposium opened a global conversation about the value of being a ‘‘#cityofculture’ after 30 years of…

International Symposium | Cities of Culture, 30 years on

Culture Liverpool and the Institute of Cultural Capital have partnered with the British Council, and the CreArt European Network to host #Impacts18, a two-day International Symposium which will take place 18-19 October. This global conversation will see cultural heavyweights from across the world join in Liverpool to discuss culture as a catalyst for urban change.…

Project | British Council and UK Cities of Culture

Commissioned by the British Council, this project explores the relationship between the British Council and the UK City of Culture (UKCC) programme, focusing on interrogating the added value provided by the British Council, as event partner focused on building international cultural relations for the UK. Drawing on a review of policy and strategy documents, as well as interviews with…

PROJECT | Shakespeare Lives ~ Impact on perceptions of Britain

I have been appointed by the British Council to direct a research project on the impact that the Shakespeare Lives programme has on perceptions of Britain. I will lead a team within the Institute of Cultural Capital to conduct this work throughout 2016. We will work closely with three different areas of the world as core case studies:…

My research trajectory since 1999

I have interrogated cities and event-led cultural policy-making since 1999. I started by revisiting the cultural legacy of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games to inform my work on the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festivals. This was followed by research on the legacy of Glasgow 1990 as European Capital of Culture; the experience of Cultureshock – cultural programme for…

Intangible Heritage and urban development

On the 23rd September I am speaking at Sharing Cultures 2015  – the Fourth International Conference on Intangible Heritage. My paper discusses findings from my research on the impacts of the Liverpool World Heritage Site on city narratives and ambitions. The paper challenges the false perception that there is an irreconciliable tension between urban development and heritage protection. The project:  In…

The journey towards Hull 2017

I have spent a day in Hull, discussing regeneration opportunities, the challenges of event-driven urban strategies and the many ways in which local people can define success after hosting the UK City of Culture title. We talked & rebated numbers, anecdotes, expectations met, surprises and disappointments in many other cities that have previously undergone a…

Regeneration with attitude: Towards Hull 2017

The Royal Society of Arts has invited me to speak at their 2015 Engage Series: RSA Connect: Hull, 14 July 2015 This event aims to explore alternative approaches to regeneration through people, culture and enterprise. I will be a facilitator, together with Lia Ghilardi,  and will share examples of how we can harness the power of the…

Local Dependencies for Global Festivals

2011, Jan 28-29, Birkbeck University, London Conference: LEARNING FROM BARCELONA: ART, REAL ESTATE AND THE PRE-OLYMPIC CITY This two-day workshop brought together for the first time academics, social activists and artists from Barcelona and London to discuss, through position papers and the showing of participants’ artistic  and cultural production, how the Olympic Games in each…

Urban Regeneration, Arts Programming and Major Events

Published in: International Journal for Cultural Policy (vol 10, n 1) (pp. 103-118) The potential of arts activity as a tool for urban regeneration has been widely discussed since the early 1980s. In parallel, notions of cultural/urban tourism and arts/city marketing have gained great popularity among marketers, city planners and cultural policy-makers alike. Major events…

Local Roots for a Universal Event?

Paper presented in: 3rd International Conference on Cultural Policy Research, HEC Montreal (25-28 August, 2004) [powerpoint slides] 1990 – and Bilbao – opening of the Guggenheim Museum in 1997. Despite the generalised use of cultural initiatives as catalysts for urban regeneration, it is not frequent to find parallel developments in city-specific cultural policies. This has…

Communicating Diversity through Major Events

Garcia, B. (2004) “Communicating Diversity through Major Events. The case of Cultureshock, North West Cultural Programme of the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games“, presented in: Dialeg sobre Comunicacio i Diversitat Cultural, Universal Forum of Cultures, Barcelona 2004 (24-27 May 2004) [powerpoint slides] Major events can act as powerful catalysts to embrace and communicate cultural diversity. This…

(2002-2003) Evaluation of Cultureshock, North West Cultural Programme for the 2002 Commonwealth Games

Research commissioned by the main partners of Cultureshock, including the Arts Council of England and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. The project was undertaken within the Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Glasgow, with contributions from Christine Hamilton (CCPR Director) and Carmen Bota (CCPR researcher). The final report and summary reports are kept at…