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This chapter studies Sydney’s experience as an Olympic city from the perspective of cultural policy and planning. In previous work I have argued that culture and the arts play a critical role in defining the Games symbolic dimensions and are a determining factor in the sustainability of event legacies (see García 2002, 2003, 2004; Moragas 1992). In this context, interpreting Sydney’s cultural discourse is fundamental to understand how the city was experienced during the Olympic fortnight and the kinds of images it projected to the rest of the world in its lead-up and aftermath.

Sydney’s cultural discourse offers a good example of the internal contradictions that underpin many examples of city-based events that try to be everything for everyone: locally meaningful, nationally engaging and globally impacting. The problem of such a multi-layered approach is that it tends to lead to overly simplistic and tokenistic cultural representations, an issue best reflected in the often confused narratives of Olympic opening and closing ceremonies (see Tomlinson 1996). Despite claims to the contrary (Cashman 2005), Sydney was no exception as its ceremonies failed to depart from established narratives about Australia dominated by a white and Western sense of aesthetics where indigenous and multicultural cultures are an exotic addition rather than a core component (García and Miah 2000). However, Sydney promised a comprehensive programme of cultural activity over four-years and presented an unprecedented street programme of activity during the Olympic fortnight, which provided additional opportunities to explore and demonstrate the worth of its cultural discourse. This chapter offers a detailed analysis of how Sydney’s cultural discourse came about and the effect on its profile as an Olympic city.

I build on the current debate about event-led cultural regeneration in urban environments (Burbank et al. 2002, Chalkey and Essex 2005, Gold and Gold 2005, Monclus 2004, Richards and Wilson 2004) to critique existing definitions and guidelines for cultural engagement within the Olympic Movement. My main argument is that the positioning of the Olympic Games as a city-based, nationally-framed and globally embracing cultural event presents important challenges for cultural-policy makers and has rarely resulted in sustainable cultural legacies. Sydney had an opportunity to question established practices and overcome the trend towards using cultural activity as a platform for global media-spectacle at the expense of meaningful local representation. However, existing Olympic structures, particularly media and sponsorship agreements, prevented this ambition from fully coming to fruition.

In January 2007, I was invited by MidWest to contribute to a series of discussions on the role of artists in policy-making under the common title ‘Know Your Place’. My involvement started with a conversation with a group of artists from the West Midlands. In this meeting, it became clear that some of the main issues concerning the artists involved in this consultation were their feeling of being excluded from the policy-making process, lacking confidence to overcome existing barriers, the perception that decision-makers did not pay sufficient attention to artist-led initiatives and, particularly, the feeling that there was not a shared language through which to resolve the existing tensions between arts and policy needs.

In this paper, I offer an overview of the key issues presented in response to these realisations. These are organised around three main topics:

      What is cultural policy?
Can artists influence cultural policy?
Can the language of research and evaluation offer a bridge between arts and policy needs?

Seventeen years on, Glasgow is still remembered for its achievements as 1990 European City of Culture. The city has been praised for its pioneering approach to culture-led regeneration but also criticised by what some see as an inherently unfair, elitist and instrumental approach to managing culture. References to Glasgow 1990 have resurfaced in the UK due to the nomination of Liverpool as 2008 European Capital of Culture.

In Liverpool, as well as other cities aspiring to or already nominated to the title, the emphasis is on economic regeneration but linked to the expectation that, with it, will come wider social and cultural regeneration. On this basis, this paper revisits what was achieved by Glasgow’s approach to community engagement in 1990 and assesses whether the experience of involving local creative groups has led to any sustainable legacy within the city’s creative economy.

The paper’s main claim is that localities must work towards diverse and inclusive social environments to secure high levels of local creativity and thus maximise distinctiveness, competitiveness and long-term sustainability for cultural initiatives.

The issue of defining who is a journalist, what rights they have, how they are served and managed is an important aspect of determining control of the platform. Over the last four Olympic Games, the phenomenon of alternative or non-accredited journalists has asserted itself (partly because of the Internet) and institutional arrangements, often quite elaborate, have developed for the management of this group.

As the Beijing 2008 Olympics approaches, the future of the non-accredited journalist is in the balance, though the city plans to accommodate over 11,000 non-accredited journalists during Games time. We outline the political context of their presence at the Olympics and suggest that they can present an ideological challenge for the Beijing government generally and for the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) specifically. However, we also suggest that non-accredited journalists - rather than the accredited - could also be crucial at repositioning Western media within China.

The modern Olympic Games were founded at the end of the 19th century as a vehicle to inspire youth and promote internationalism. Since then, they have evolved into a global media phenomenon and a platform to establish or project a world class city. In this journey, the role of universally recognised symbolic components such as the Olympic rings, torch relay and, crucially, the mass appeal of opening and closing ceremonies has been increasingly pivotal to the 'Olympic experience'.

Other equally relevant components of the Olympic hosting process include urban planning and graphic design - from new Olympic venue infrastructures to ubiquitous signage and branding, the so-called ‘Look of the Games’; and street animation to manage the crowds as well as create a festive atmosphere - the now termed ‘LiveSites’. These elements are evidence of the role of cultural and creative entrepreneurs in shaping the Olympic experience. Crucially, it is often these dimensions that create the most sustainable and meaningful legacies for local communities and Olympic visitors alike.

The paper explores the current definitions and regulations for presenting an official Olympic cultural programme and contrasts their narrow focus with the wide range of areas that have been explored and established creative legacies in previous Olympic cities, from Barcelona 1992 to Vancouver 2010.

In the context of culture-led regeneration initiatives, the representation of a city becomes a strongly contested issue. Local authorities compete with event organisers and key regeneration and cultural stakeholders as well as the local community to determine a narrative for the city. Opinion-leaders are pressed to provide a coherent and ‘sellable’ story of the city at the same time as gaining consensus to ensure it is meaningful and owned by the wider community. Further, criticisms against city marketing and branding exercises as over simplistic and elite-oriented, emerge in parallel to demands for a raise in local expectations and pride, and the belief that using culture as a catalyst for regeneration can help bridge the gap between external image and local identity needs. This paper considers approaches to understanding conflicting city representations from a methodological point of view. The paper places an emphasis on mapping exercises as a technique that can help capture key cultural relationships and their positioning in the city at a geographical as well as an ideographical or symbolic level. Such exercise can help portray relevant (and contradictory) narratives of the city as well as visualise the sources for such narratives. The focus of this exercise is Liverpool in the wake of its title as European Capital of Culture in 2008. The exploration of a symbolic cultural map of Liverpool is embedded within a wider research programme on the impact of hosting the 2008 title, which combines academic interrogation with the ambition to inform and influence the city’s cultural policy framework. The paper concludes with a brief reflection about the role of academics as contributors to the city’s narrative and, more specifically, their position within the symbolic map of present day Liverpool.