Maiden city is offering both cultural celebration and examination in its Barack Obama-backed year of culture proposal
DERRY – LONDONDERRY – Doire – the city on the Foyle has never been short of names. But the political, cultural and even sectarian importance that attaches to the name has, so far, served to show to outsiders the contested perceptions its own citizens have. No longer.
The city’s cultural community has linked with its people at local community level in an unprecedented manner to bid for the UK’s first-ever city of culture in 2013, which will be announced tonight.
Derry is competing with Birmingham, Norwich and Sheffield.
James Kerr, executive director of the Verbal Arts Centre, explains that Derry “has loads of history, but it is contentious history”.
The city of culture bid offers a chance to “crack the cultural code” to offer “purposeful inquiry” into what has happened inside and outside the famous city walls either 300 or just 30 years ago.
“Derry is offering both cultural celebration and examination. We could be a model for elsewhere,” he argues. “Prejudice is defeated firstly intellectually, then legally and – finally – emotionally. And that is where culture comes in.”
The outgoing mayor of Derry, a Sinn Féiner and one-time republican prisoner Paul Fleming, summed up the mood: “We are all Derry now, and the bid for the year of culture is about who we have become, not who we were.”
The city has more than its fair share of backers from the world of politics and the arts and the area in between where they overlap.
As expected, those with Derry blood in their veins – like Phil Coulter and Dana – are to the fore. But the impressive list of backers includes some rather more unlikely names.
“For too long Derry has been associated with its recent past. The city of culture designation would allow people to go beyond the perception, experience the real Derry and appreciate it as a unique place of talent, creativity and warmth.” So says actor Gabriel Byrne.
Add to that the names of the outgoing Belfast lord mayor Naomi Long, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, Brian Cowen and even Barack Obama, and it is clear the extent to which the city’s famed political pedigree has reached beyond the confines to engage powerful support.
The bid effort is spearhead by “cultural broker” Peter Jenkinson, the bid team’s special adviser.
He tells it as it is: “The city is buzzing. It’s feeling different as well as looking different. I feel this is the winning bid.” This is as far from spin or cliche as is possible as the city is indeed taking on a new look.
The former Ebrington military base on the east bank of the mighty Foyle, home to the paratroopers who opened fire on Bloody Sunday, is now being redeveloped to include a gallery, modern art centre, studios, bars, hotels and commercial outlets.
Its army parade ground will by next summer be an open-air events venue bigger than London’s Trafalgar Square.
Nearby a new £14 million (€16.75 million) pedestrian “peace bridge”, funded by the powersharing Stormont administration and the EU shared space programme, will span the river, linking the site on the largely Protestant Waterside with the “Catholic” city side.
The city’s urban regeneration company, Ilex, which is behind the plans, views the scheme as the “step change” that culture and the arts can bring about. The scheme states boldly that Derry’s history is now firmly in the past.
The site – like the regeneration project itself – is loaded with live historical connections. It was from this point that siege was laid by King James II to the walled city in 1689, a key stand-off in the Williamite war.
Ebrington was also a key naval base during the battle of the Atlantic during the second World War. Now gifted to the local authority by Stormont, the £6 million project typifies the symbolism of the city of culture bid and the belief in the transformational power of “culture”.
Yet this is no top-down bid being pushed by an elite with local power and cash. What is now so striking about this city is the breadth and depth of public support for the city of culture bid.
While the council provides the focus and the financial backing, it is the people of Derry – 40 per cent of whom weren’t yet born on Bloody Sunday – who provide the vital emotional backing.
- The result will be announced on BBC television's The One Showtonight.