(2007) Living the multicultural Olympic city. Cultural policy and planning in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Summer Games

Garcia, B. ‘Living the multicultural Olympic city. Cultural policy and planning in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Summer Games’,

in: Gold, J.R. & Gold, M.M. (Eds) Olympic Cities: Urban planning, city agendas and the World’s Games, 1896 to the present, London: Routledge, pp. 237-264 (2007)

 

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.

(2007) New Beijing, Great Journalism? Media Freedom During the Beijing Olympic Games period

Garcia, B. and Miah, A. (2007) ‘New Beijing, Great Journalism? Media Freedom During the Beijing Olympic Games period’

in session: Asian Olympic Games and/as Media, Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations, Theory, Culture and Society 25th Anniversary Conference, Tokyo (13-16 July 2007) [presentation]

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.

(2006) Non-Accredited Media, Olympic Games and the Host City

Miah. A. and Garcia, B. (2006) Invited Plenary Speaker: ‘Non-Accredited Media, Olympic Games and the Host City’

in Communication Forum 2006: Global Olympiad, Chinese Media, National Center for Radio and Television Studies, Communication University of China and Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania (Beijing, July 2006)
Since their inauguration in 1896, the Modern Olympic Games have been researched through various academic traditions. With the formalisation of cognate research areas such as media, cultural studies, and sport and leisure studies in the 1970s, social research into the Olympics has developed steadily. Anthropologists and sociologists have considered the Games to be a rich source from which to study the playing out of national identities and cultural politics. Often referred to as the biggest event in the world, the Olympic Games has become a site for historic political expressions, such as the time in Mexico (1968) when athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos protested the treatment of African Americans in the USA by raising black-gloved hands on their medal podium.

In recent years, research has focused on social and economic impacts and the role of the media in transforming the Games into a globally shared experience. This research demonstrates that media coverage of the Games plays a vital role in projecting an image of the local host, but that the current structures of Games organisers and media providers undermine the representation of culturally diverse voices. By focusing on reporting the sporting competitions and official ceremonies, the media fails to reflect the particularities of each Olympic festival. As such, the cultural context of the Games, including street activity and other cultural programming, is often lost or misrepresented.

Today, this trend is in the process of transformation with the emergence of alternative and new media, a phenomenon that has evolved since the creation of the first official ‘non-accredited media centre’ (NAMC) at the Sydney 2000 Games. The NAMC is distinct from the accredited media centres (comprising the Main Press Centre and the International Broadcasting Centre), which are reserved only for the official media right-holders under exclusive national arrangements. The main function of accredited centres is to provide facilities and information for the reporting of sporting competitions. In contrast, the NAMCs are open to any media representative (including freelance journalists) and offer a significant amount of material on human-interest stories, local activity groups, and the Olympic cultural programme.

In this context, our paper builds on research from the four most recent Olympic Games where the NAMCs have developed to inquire into how such journalists might transform reporting about the Olympic Games. We consider what stories of the Olympics “non-accredited” journalists tell and what role they play in terms of defining and affecting the meaning of the Games? 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. It is also of particular importance to organising committees whose work relies on managing the media. Indeed, the development of new media and a range of ‘Web 2.0’ platforms raises new questions about how the notion of control should be approached in the era of Internet journalism where, potentially, every spectator might be counted as a journalist of the Games.

As the Beijing 2008 Olympics approaches, the future of the non-accredited journalist is in the balance. The non-accredited journalists (along with the unaccredited or ‘citizen journalist’) could present an ideological challenge for the Beijing government generally and for the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) specifically. However, non-accredited journalists – rather than the accredited – could also be crucial at re-positioning Western media within China.

(2006-2008) Towards London 2012: Non-accredited Media, Cultural Discourses, and Olympic Host City Identity

Co-investigators: Dr Beatriz Garcia and Dr Andy Miah

Research funded by the British Academy.

Additional information and links: Culture @ the Olympics | 2006 edition

This project develops BA funded research awarded to Drs Garcia and Miah in 2004 to study the role of the non-accredited media centre (NAMC) at the Athens Olympic Games. Our proposal builds on previous findings, continuing the longitudinal approach reflected in our original title: ‘From Athens 2004 to London 2012’. The foundation for this project emerged from research at the Sydney 2000 and Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Games. Athens 2004 represents the first formal data collection period, which we will develop up to 2012.

In previous work we have noted that the NAMC is a recent phenomenon which holds an ambiguous position within the Games’ media structures: it can play host to globally relevant meetings but tends to attract limited coverage. However, it is in the interest of future host cities to strengthen the position of the NAMC, because of its local cultural and political role.

Our findings in Athens show that this can take the following forms:

- Socio-economic: the NAMC provides a platform to communicate the Games’ wider (non-sporting) context, from its effect on local neighbourhoods (ie. transport matters, job creation etc) to its wider impact on international relations (diplomatic affairs, the practical management of Olympic ideals such as peace and understanding). These debates tend to become central tenets of Olympic legacy, which come to represent how the Games is remembered.

- Cultural: the NAMC functions as a hospitality and promotional venue for local government agencies and cultural groups, thus ‘representing’ the culture of the city/region through what is displayed within the media centre itself.

– Political: the NAMC offers a space for debating matters that might be considered problematic from the perspective of the International Olympic Committee. Specifically, it functions as a space for addressing sensitive local and international political issues, which are purposefully prohibited at official Olympic venues.

These social, economic, cultural and political functions do not tend to take place elsewhere at the Olympic Games, as the official venues are required to focus on the sports events. For London and future Olympic hosts, this means that securing sustainable legacies would benefit from the effective management of the NAMC as a provider of more inclusive and broader cultural meanings. This has become critical in the current climate of distrust towards major events either for their potential economic pitfalls or indeed the threat of international terrorism.

The experiences in Turin and Beijing will be important to inform London’s approach in 2012. It is not yet clear whether a model for the NAMC is emerging and, in part, our work aims to follow its development to understand whether knowledge is transferred from one Games to another, or whether it remains a culturally specific endeavour.

(2005) City of style… and substance. Tracing the legacy of 1990 on Glasgow’s creative communities

Garcia, B. ‘City of style… and substance. Tracing the legacy of 1990 on Glasgow’s creative communities’, presented at: Creative Clusters Conference (Belfast, October 23-26, 2005) [powerpoint slides]

Glasgow’s reign as 1990 European City of Culture is regarded as a successful example of culture-led regeneration. Claims of success focus on Glasgow’s ability to use a cultural event as a catalyst for image change, which led to a dramatic growth in leisure and business tourism and contributed to strengthening the city’s creative economy. Glasgow 1990 was also originally praised for its broad cultural remit and spatial distribution of activity to reach out to marginal communities. However, this is rarely mentioned as a legacy or mark of success. This is partly a result of the limited visibility that Glasgow community programme had beyond those directly involved, an example of the trend towards excluding grassroots stories from the mainstream media.

Fifteen years on, references to Glasgow 1990 have resurfaced due to the nomination of Liverpool as 2008 European Capital of Culture and the interest in establishing replicable models for cultural regeneration. The emphasis is on economic regeneration but linked to the expectation that, with it, will come social and cultural regeneration. On this basis, it is relevant to revisit what was achieved by Glasgow’s approach to community engagement in 1990 and assess whether the experience has led to any sustainable legacy within the city’s creative economy.

This paper presents the results of a three-year project looking into the long-term cultural legacies of event-led regeneration. The research involved the content analysis of 20 years of press references to Glasgow 1990 and related cultural policy documents, 55 personal interviews and seven focus groups with event stakeholders – including a wide range of grassroots art groups. The findings support the claim 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.

Selected findings

• Glasgow 1990 community programme lacked profile at the time but lives on in the work of the city’s best established grassroots art institutions today. Community art leaders claim that the most important legacy of 1990 is the confidence boost it brought to alternative arts groups. This led to higher levels of entrepreneurship that, ultimately, allowed them to find new funding sources at a time of cuts in public spending.
• The 1990 community programme strengthened the view that the arts can make a difference within deprived and marginal communities. It acted as a catalyst for the disability arts movement and as a point of reference for pioneering work in multicultural and multi-faith experiences resulting in the opening of the Hidden Gardens in 2003.

Successful components of 1990 community programming

• Avoiding paternalism and instrumentalism: organisers followed an artistic vision rather than social or economic targets. Participants were encouraged to engage with a creative experience rather than treating it as ‘therapy’ or a purely skill-development exercise
• A flexible and organic process: broad time frames allowed a wide range of groups to present proposals; funding was subdivided so that everyone could get support; there were no strict thematic or format restrictions
• ‘Mainstream arts’ budgets: generous funding which also supported research and development. The programme thus became more aspirational.

Selected policy lessons:

• Cities must invest in longitudinal research in order to identify the cultural legacies of regeneration
• Identifying and understanding cultural legacies is important because they tend to become embedded in the fabric of a city and can thus be more meaningful and sustainable than economic and physical legacies
• Securing strong cultural legacies is particularly relevant to marginal communities as they require a strong confidence basis and a tolerant environment to develop their own approach to creativity and eventually contribute to the wider city economy
• Cultural legacies flourish better in flexible environments by following organic rather than excessively strategic processes. This is particularly the case within deprived communities which rely on informal cultural networks

(2005) Exchanging culture for style… Glasgow’s image transformation from ‘City of Culture’ into ‘Scotland with Style’ (1983-2004)

Garcia, B. “Exchanging culture for style… Glasgow’s image transformation from ‘City of Culture’ into ‘Scotland with Style’ (1983-2004)”,

presented at: Festivals and Events: Beyond Economic Impacts, Leisure Studies Association Annual Conference, Napier University (Edinburgh, July 6-8, 2005) [powerpoint slides]

This paper explores discussions around city marketing and event branding strategies as catalysts in the transformation of a city’s image by studying the experience of Glasgow in the last two decades. The paper analyses the evolution of Glasgow’s image projection from a classic city marketing approach (the renowned ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’ campaign in 1983) into a holistic branding strategy (the 2004 ‘Scotland with Style’ campaign), passing through the promotion of Glasgow as European City of Culture in 1990. These campaigns and related activities, including the evolution of city logotypes and slogans, are studied through document narrative analysis and personal interviews with key informants representing the city’s political, cultural and business worlds.

The purpose of the paper is to identify the key elements of Glasgow’s original marketing strategy (as discussed by Paddison, 1993) and study the effect of their progressive transformation into a branding strategy (see Evans, 2003). This implies a reflection about the changing role of culture as a key selling point for Glasgow (see Kearns and Philo, 1993) and an evaluation of the influence of hosting a special event – the European City of Culture title – in this progression.

The paper notes that the combination of innovative approaches to city marketing with the hosting of cultural events has played a key role in Glasgow’s positioning as a cultural centre first and, since the late 1990s, as a centre for the creative industries. However, it is important to establish that such an approach has led to celebrating certain aspects of the city’s culture while others have been progressively marginalised. Existing studies into city marketing and event branding tend to overlook the potentially negative impact of using culture as the main promotional tool of a given city. With its analysis of Glasgow’s experience, this paper will demonstrate the relevance of assessing cultural impacts as a complement to the more established economic and physical impact assessments in order to better understand the effect of hosting special events and developing event-led marketing strategies on the cultural life of a place (see also Richards and Wilson, 2004).

References

• Evans,G. (2003) Hard-branding the Cultural City. From Prado to Prada, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(2), pp. 417-440.
• Kearns, G. and Philo, C. (1993) Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present. Oxford: Pergamon.
• Paddison,R. (1993) City marketing, image reconstruction, and urban regeneration, Urban Studies, 30(2), pp. 339-350.
• Richards,G. & Wilson,J. (2004) The impact of cultural events on city image: Rotterdam, cultural capital of Europe 2001, Urban Studies, 41(10), pp. 1931-1951.

(2005) De-constructing the City of Culture: The long term cultural legacies of Glasgow 1990

Garcia, B. ‘De-constructing the City of Culture: The long term cultural legacies of Glasgow 1990‘, in: Urban Studies (2005: vol 42, n5/6) (pp. 1-28)

This paper evaluates the success of the European Union City/Capital of Culture programme as a model for culture-led regeneration through assessing the long-term cultural impacts of Glasgow’s experience in 1990. The paper relies on soft indicators such as media and personal discourses to measure the cultural impacts of regeneration as distinct from economic, physical and even social impacts. The effect of regeneration on local images and identities are seen as a key cultural impacts that, in Glasgow’s case, emerge as the stronger and best sustained legacy of its reign as City of Culture fifteen years on. However, the assessment of cultural impacts is scarce and, instead, is often dismissed as purely anecdotal compared with the hard-evidence provided by established economic and physical impact evaluations. To address this situation, this paper outlines the research design and main findings of a three-year qualitative longitudinal study into the progression of narratives around Glasgow’s image and identity, covering the years 1986 to 2003. The paper concludes that these narratives are the most important source of current pride and belief in the city’s potential as a creative centre and are thus the more sustainable legacy of Glasgow’s approach to culture-led regeneration.

(2005) What is cultural policy research?

Scullion, A. and García, B. “What is cultural policy research?” in: International Journal of Cultural Policy (2005: vol 11, n2) (pp. 113-127)

Cultural policy research exists in many contexts, asks many different kinds of questions and adopts a wide repertoire of research methodologies from a raft of academic discourses. This essay investigates the research questions and approaches being undertaken by those working in this field. To achieve this the essay draws upon readings of contemporary publications in the field and on the authors’ experiences of building a research capacity in the area of cultural policy in a British – and, more particularly, a post-devolution Scottish – university. The essay traces the emergence of an academic discipline in the field and seeks to advance this by reviewing a tripartite research agenda investigating: the history and historiography of cultural policy; the principles and strategies of cultural policy; and, the relationships between cultural policy and cultural theory/cultural studies.

(2002- 2005) Cities and Culture Project: Understanding the Long-term Legacies of Glasgow 1990, European City of Culture

Lead Investigator: Research funded by the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR, University of Glasgow).

[Project Webpage]

Research on the long-term legacies of Glasgow 1990 European City of Culture was part of a wider research programme, within the Centre for Cultural Policy Research, the Cities and Culture Project. This programme of research examined existing models of governance in the contemporary city so as to identify the opportunities and challenges they provide to support and sustain urban cultural investment.

The project was led by Beatriz García with support from Matthew Reason (research assistant), Adrienne Scullion (CCPR Academic Director) and Christine Hamilton (CCPR Director).

Find below a brief summary of the main research questions.
A more detailed research description is also available.

Research questions

The ‘Cities and Culture Project’ explored notions of cultural policy and governance in the European City to contextualise existing and potential legacies of championing culture in an urban context. The research combined an interest in understanding economic impacts with a focus on exploring processes and explaining relations. The main aim was to develop a body of knowledge that allows to identify and interpret how urban provisions for culture are sustained or lost in the long-term –over a ten year period – and how these provisions relate to the development of cultural activity in the city.

Phase one of the project looked at Glasgow post 1990 as a case study. The process to bid and fund the hosting of the European City of Culture title in 1990 was seen as a key example of urban championing of culture and is thus used as the main focus of the research. The legacy of this investment and its context of governance was explored through analysing the transformation of the city’s image from the early 1980s through 1990 and its aftermath, to election of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 and Scottish devolution in 1999. The context of major shifts in local government of the mid 1990s, the post 1997 change of UK government and the ongoing debate around Scottish home rule which culminated with the devolved government of 1999 was an essential frame for our study. The research questioned how perceptions and images of Glasgow complemented or competed with discourses of national (be that Scotland or UK) cultural and political life.

(2004) Cultural Policy in European Cities: Lessons from Experience, Prospects for the Future

Published in: Special edition on Cultural Policy and Regeneration, Local Economy (vol 19, n4) (pp. 312-326)

This paper reviews the uses of cultural policy and planning as tools of urban regeneration in western European cities. Following a brief assessment of the evolution of European cultural policy in recent decades, the paper studies the origins and development of the European City/Capital of Culture programme and explores the experience of cities considered to have succeeded in re-imaging and regenerating themselves through cultural activity and special events. The paper ends with a reflection on the notion of cultural planning and its potential as an integrated alternative to urban cultural policy, and offers recommendations for further development within the UK context.