The European Capital of Culture (ECOC) initiative is 25 years old.

The European Commission will celebrate this anniversary with a special event and a strategic conference on 23-24 March in Brussels. The aim is to discuss ECOC´s legacy and impact and give the opportunity to exchange practices with certain past, current and future capital cities. On the 23 March in the morning there will be an information day for future bidding cities. The preliminary agenda is already available here. Save the date!

The first city to receive this title was Athens back in 1985. Thus the anniversary conference will be precisely opened by President Barroso and Jack Lang, who was the founder of the idea along with the late Melina Mercouri, former Minister of Culture for Greece.

Since 1985 the event has turned out to be one of the most popular initiatives of the European Commission – along with, most probably, the Eramus mobility programme for higher education. The title has become so valued that the Commission decided to change the rules in order to balance cities´ chances throughout the whole territory to obtain this award. From 2011 on, two cities in two pre-designated member states will bear the desired European label. Check the full list of countries invited to present bids up until 2019.

Consequently, in 2011 we will have Tallin (Estonia) and Turku (Finland); in 2012 it will be the time for Guimarães (Portugal) and Maribor (Slovenia); in 2013, the ECOC´s label will be hold by Košice (Slovakia) and Marseille (France); and in 2014, the jury selected Riga (Latvia) and Umeå (Sweden) – these last two cities to be designated officially by the Council of Ministers this May only.

The European Capital of Culture has evolved into an attractive title for its promises of overall urban regeneration alongside with tourism and economic potential growth. Naturally, the ECOC encloses the opportunity to refresh a city’s cultural infra-structure and to provide a one year full and daring artistic programme. Yet, specific cultural and artistic objectives became one of the pieces of the whole cake.

The dilemma lies nowadays in combining a myriad of different levels on the quest to place each city in the European map. City authorities and ECOC´s teams are supposed to find a good balance between spending in infra-structures and urban renovation and putting forward events that would make worth all the material investment. There is a need to conjugate culture with other sectors, investing in stimulating local creation, connecting it with international dynamics, yet exploring its economic potential and also promoting social cohesion. A city is supposed to interact with its neighbouring region, but also with the rest of the country, with that year’s other European Capital and with the whole of Europe. Last but not least is the challenge of making it all sustainable and ever lasting.

In this sense, the European Commission has been making an effort: to improve regulations and selection procedures; to promote networking and exchange of information between past, present and future cities; to provide guidelines and set up a monitoring and evaluation process to better assist candidate and selected cities. In addition, a Prize has been set up to the designated cities (from 2010 on) provided that they have honoured the commitments made in the selection phase and acted on the recommendations of the panels during the selection and monitoring phases.

The reference and key information source for all cities is the famous “Palmer/Rae report” that scrutinised ECOC´s from 1995 to 2004. Yet every year new internal and external evaluation reports, ex-ante and ex-post, are released. Consult the latest report on the 2007 and 2008 ECOC´s performances.

In order to know more about the impact of ECOC´s on the local independent cultural sector, explore the Labforculture Research in focus “European Capitals of Culture”.

Most important: if possible, pay a visit to this year’s European capitals of culture! 2010 joins up a special combination of cities from west to east of the continent, just before the new rules apply: Essen for the Ruhr region (Germany), Pécs (Hungary) and also a city from a non-member state, Istanbul (Turkey).