Les Rencontres: delegates of metropolises and capitals of culture meet at Zollverein

From October 14 to 17, numerous European culture representatives gathered in the Sanaa building on the premises of the former pit Zollverein for another meeting of „Les Rencontres de la Ruhr“ – the issue at hand: „Metropolises and culture“.
Below, we have caught some impressions and opinions for you.

Les Rencontres...

...established 1994, is a network of European cultural creative people, consisting of directors, fo cultural departments, capital of culture representatives, and other members of municipal and regional cultural institutions throughout Europe. Founded by the European Commission and several ministries of culture, Les Rencontres (according to its rules) aims -among other things- to establish a network for European culture politics on a regional level and to develop common basics, ideas, and structures.

„Metropolises and culture“?

Per year, there are eight Les Rencontres meetings scheduled: before this one in Essen, the network met in September in Saint-Brieuc (France), and the topic of that gathering was „A European objective: culture in rural areas“. „Metropolises and culture“ has been chosen consciously for and by Essen, explains Bert van Meggelen, moderator of the sessions at Zollverein: „Usually, the topics for the conferences are chosen by Les Rencontres. But in this case, I was asked by the city of Essen – they wanted to know what would be an expedient subject for the meeting in their city.“

Jens Kobler: During this meeting, some of the sessions deal with former, present, and future capitals of culture. Essen and Istanbul are represented, but also Gdansk for 2016, and Turku in Finland, and Tallinn in Estonia for 2011. 2001, you have been the representative of Rotterdam. To what extent is it possible for the representatives to learn something from each other, considering the various different cities and concepts?

Bert van Meggelen

Bert van Meggelen: Basically, there are also other meetings for that kind of communication, for example, the ones organised by the European Commission itself. They deal exclusively with such questions and suggestions like „We made this or that mistake – don’t make the same one!“ Les Rencontres focus more on social, cultural, and political approaches important to all participants. Thus the topic for this week-end is mostly „metropolises“ and not „capitals of culture“ – due to the fact Essen wants to be recognised as part of a region, or even part of a Ruhr metropolis, and not as a single, separate city. On Friday, for example, we talked about metropolises in a stage of development and the issue of criteria, and value measures for European metropolitan areas.

Friday?

After some discussions if Europe needs cultural metropolises at all – and if yes, what kind of metropolises – two specialists deliver their insights for the session „The cultural metropolis in a globalised world: a challenge for European cities“: Cynthia Gobin (her researches focus on urban development), and Agostino Petrillo, an urban sociologist.
 

Agostino Petrillo considers the contests between cities regarding big events unfruitful, citing the competition not only being an obstacle preventing inter-city cooperation, but also keeping a city from working on not so prestigious, but nevertheless more reasonable strategies in favour of culture. In his opinion, the political class and the industry take a bigger interest in representative huge events than in permanent cultural development – plus, there is this idea hovering in economy circles too much culture would be bad for productivity, and the consumption of the goods the industry provides. Another topic of Petrillo’s speech: his criticism of so-called “beacon projects” – these would mostly benefit just one city’s centre, but there wouldn’t be any impact on the periphery, the suburbs, for example.

In her speech, Cynthia Gobin focuses on the re-invention of public urban space. According to her, speed, mobility, and accessability have been the main criteria which organised and formed our current big cities – in the post-carbon age, a more multi-centric map would be possible, and an urban structure taking a daily routine with more leisure time into consideration. The pedestrian perspective should be rediscovered, as well as the idea of sharing urban space - not mandatory, including interaction and communication, but simply as the idea of sharing common space without any further requirements. Differences between groups and citizens shouldn’t be covered – cultural and social differences should be tolerated. Gobin thinks that citizens are entitled to an environment which consists of urban as well as nature elements, that way, a new civil publicity in urban space could be generated.

Saturday?

The first vice president of Les Rencontres, Odile Wolf, releases a final paper for discussions and voting – and then, the participants get a „(P)Review 2010-2011“ for the respective capitals of culture. In a short interview, Nilgün Mirze from Istanbul describes the difficulties to work with politics, economy, and creative sector all at once – the respective cooperation partners were not used to that kind of procedure. Delegates of Ruhr.2010 present some strategies and topics of the programme. Jürgen Fischer, for example, talks about the approach of the Ruhr.2010 GmbH to move like „a spider in the net(work) of the cities“ and even claims the organisation has started a cultural citizen movement in this significant year for the area. Bernd Fesel announces the future award „Most Creative European City“. Oliver Scheytt emphasises, among others, that the objective of RUHR.2010 has been to demonstrate „what a region can do – and not what or whom a region can buy”. So, a single artistic director (like Peter Sellers) would have been the wrong signal. Scheytt also says the region had to offer some main attractions which were centrally organised, and some which were locally organised, and that – apart from the missing artistic director – had caused some confusion among some of the media.

There is some slight criticism from the forum that the main focus was on classic tourism rather than adventure travellers – even though the Ruhr area was an exciting region for the latter group. In the final declaration of Les Rencontres, you will also find a reminder: metropolises shouldn’t exaggerate too much regarding complexity, polycentric activities, and numbers games. No problem for Turku in Finland and Tallinn in Estonia: both are medium-sized coastal towns at the Baltic Sea, and both are European Capitals of Culture 2011. Two representatives deliver a description of their plans, and there’s a short discussion: to what extent can two sometimes competing capitals of culture cooperate?

Bert van Meggelen: For participants like the delegates of Gdansk 2016, or Cyprus 2017, this is still very useful, for the others, it may be a bit too late. Regarding Turku and Tallin you can say that they'll still find some impulses for their work here, but basically, everything is installed over there and simply has to be done within the next 80 days.
The merit of Les Rencontres is the gathering of people from different structures who share their experiences regarding cultural politics, economy, and governments in their respective country with others. That is a uniting factor within Europe, and makes mutual understanding and cooperation easier.


Jens Kobler: Suvi Innilä, you are the programme director for Turku 2011- and you have been here for most of the event. Can you benefit from the experiences of the former capitals of culture?

Suvi Innilä

Suvi Innilä: Definitely, and fortunately, there are many European networking events we have visited and exchanged information. Turku, apart from Tallinn, is the last capital of culture that first had to pass a national preliminary decision. So, these European meetings will be eben more important in the future, even for cities which haven’t been set as capitals of culture yet.



Jens Kobler: Anu Kivilo, in Tallinn, you are in charge of culture ads monument protection. We just heard that some cities did not only exchange knowledge, but complete data libraries. What do you think – how important is the catch phrase „competition between cities“ for the discussion within Europe as we experience it right here?

Anu Kivilo: The whole process is open, you can always check which city applies with what kind of programme. So, you put your own approach on the desk and can permanently compare similar or totally different approaches to it.

Suvi Innilä: As long as you are just nominated, there is competition. And of course, there have to be autonomous concepts for the capitals of culture. After the city has been chosen, the cooperation stage begins.

Jens Kobler: How about the new perspective – what if the city does not only want to be represented as a city, but as a part of Europe?

Anu Kivilo

Anu Kivilo: In every city, there are historically grown structures which have to deal with that task. So, each city is a unique case and has to develop its own strategies regarding the topic „capital of culture“. There are similar subjects and fields of work in all cities, but still, there are these specific structures and characteristics which have to be considered.

Jens Kobler: But can we expect that a network of cultural professionals of various cities is more effective on a regional European level than the respective national organisations?

Suvi Innilä: Usually, the single parts of the network create mainly platforms on which international artists can share experience, knowledge, or information. So there will always be at least two dialogue levels for this exchange.

Anu Kivilo: To some extent, I am very sceptical regarding the exchange of a lot of data files or subjects being preset by a central organisation. Last but not least, it’s all about the individuals and their creative power, and their group chemistry. You can make people meet, but you can’t force them into a cooperation, or to adopt ideas if they don’t want them. Nevertheless it is crucial do exchange ideas and experiences with people you like.

Jens Kobler: Thank you for this conversation! I hope the Ruhr will not only remember its turn as the capital of culture, but also the idea of the European capitals of culture – even beyond 2010.