Many cities in recent decades have encouraged the cultural sectors and the arts as a pathway for urban regeneration. As this strategy unfolded in Cork, the festival enabled new modes of urban entrepreneurial governance and projected new visions of the city. Informed by current debates on neo-liberal urban strategies in North American and European cities, the paper explores how these urban strategies were articulated by elite actors, who attempted to appropriate the European Capital of Culture event to support their growth plans for the city, and the docklands in particular. The paper then considers how this pro-growth urban creativity was contested as it clashed with the experience and expectations of the local arts scene. The authors argue that an exploration of the strategies for the dockland and the 2005 European Capital of Culture event offers us a way into understanding how economy and culture are inscribed upon the Irish urban landscape.