Estado De La Cultura

History
European Capital of Culture
The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by the European Union for a period of one year during which it is given a chance to showcase its cultural life and cultural development. A number of European cities have used the City of Culture year to transform completely their cultural base and, in doing so, the way in which they are viewedinternationally.
History
Conceived as a means of bringing citizens of European Union (or EC, as then was) closer together, the European City of Culture was launched on June 13, 1985 by the Council of Ministers on the initiative of the Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri. Since then, the initiative has been more and more successful amongst European citizens and has had a growing cultural andsocio-economic impact on the numerous visitors it has attracted.
The European Cities of Culture were designated on an intergovernmental basis until 2004; the Member States unanimously selected the cities most likely to welcome the event and the European Commission granted a subsidy to the selected city each year. As of 2005, the EU's institutions will take part in the selection procedure of the cities thatwill host the event.

In 1990, the Ministers of Culture launched the "European Cultural Month". This event is similar to the European City of Culture but goes on for a shorter period and is addressed to Central and Eastern European countries in particular. The European Commission grants a subsidy for the European Cultural Month each year.

As early as 1991, the organisers of the differentEuropean Cities of Culture created the Network of European Cultural Capitals and Months (ECCM - info: rmaslias<at>europarl.eu.int) — enabling the exchange and dissemination of information, also to the organisers of future events. This network also carried out in 1994 a study on the impact of the European City of Culture since its creation. ECCM is a non profit organisation based in Luxembourgand acting in close collaboration to the European Institutions. Since 2006 it will present in every Cultural Capital and in former ones a travelling exhibition "A Journey to the World: Cultural Capitals". The exhibition is inaugurated for the first time in Patras, Greece on the 27th of March 2006.
Individual cities have looked to evaluate their own experience in different ways; it is not easy totrack long term evaluations of city experiences in every case. Charles Landry of the UK-based cultural consultancy Comedia has recently published an interesting evaluation of the Helsinki Year of Culture in 2000. From 2002-2005, Beatriz Garcia led a research project investigating the long term legacy of Glasgow 1990, based at the Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Glasgow.
In 1999,the European City of Culture was renamed the European Capital of Culture, and it is now financed through the Culture 2000 programme. Cork City, in Ireland, was the first city in Europe to hold the prestigious Capital of Culture title. The European Parliament and Council Decision of May 25, 1999 integrates this event into the Community framework and introduces a new selection procedure for theCapitals for the 2005–2019 period. This was done to avoid overly fierce competition to win the accolade; each EU member nation will be given the opportunity to "host" the capital in turn. Starting in 2005, two cities will now share this status each year.

In 2004, the European Commission asked Robert Palmer, director of Palmer-Rae Associates, to evaluate the programme of European Capitals of Culture1994-2004, following an earlier evaluation study examining European Capitals of Culture 1985-1993. The latest study comprehensively deals with cultural, economic, visitor, social and European perspectives of the European Capital of Culture action. It comprises two volumes: one of summary findings, analyses and conclusions; a second of individual case studies. Both volumes can be freely...