Getting all cultural

IMAGINE it. It's January 2008. York's new 2,000-seat Royal Concert Hall has been opened with a sell-out concert by the Berlin Philharmonic - a programme of Beethoven, Mahler and the world premiere of a new work by Ambrose Fields.

The concert, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, marks the official launch of York's year as the European Capital of Culture.

The city is festooned with flags and banners. A delegation of European culture ministers attend the opening gala concert, mingling with royalty in the new royal box. Elsewhere, the cafs, bars and boutiques dotted along York's new riverside caf quarter are staging a host of exhibitions, gigs and performances, and the city's theatres are hosting the 2008 York Festival of Theatre.

The city's hotels and guest houses are packed - and it is all just the beginning of a year-long festival of art, music and design which will bring record numbers of visitors to the city and leave a lasting legacy of galleries, boutiques, workshops, clubs and restaurants.

Among other highlights of the year is a festival of choral and church music at the Minster: a schools drama festival; a Viking festival and, at the height of summer, a three-day rock and pop festival on Knavesmire that puts Leeds' Carling Weekend into the shade.

It all sounds too good to be true? Well, maybe. The city already has a world-beating visitor attraction in the National Railway Museum - this year's European Museum of the Year and nominated by a panel of experts in the Sunday Times as the world's best museum.

And if the city had the courage to take the leap of imagination necessary, the next step could prove more than just a pipe-dream.

Cities across the UK have been invited to bid for the title European Capital of Culture 2008, the next year the honour falls to this country. Cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool have already declared their intentions. York is thinking about it.

The announcement last week by Coun Ken King, Labour's leisure spokesman on City of York Council, that the city is considering a bid is to be welcomed. But if we are to throw our hats in the ring, we will have to act quickly. The deadline for bids is March next year. And Coun King himself admits that the city council wouldn't even consider committing itself until the people of York have been consulted. The time-scale, admits Charlie Croft, the council's acting head of leisure services, is tight.

But the benefits could be immense. Glasgow was named European Capital of Culture in 1990 - and it changed the city for ever.

The grim city of failing factories and rising unemployment was transformed, following what was effectively a year-long festival of the arts, into a vibrant European capital with a new concert hall - which was, indeed, opened with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic - vibrant galleries, cafs and night-spots and a thriving art scene.

There was a 40 per cent jump in attendance at the city's theatres, halls, museums and galleries, while the number of tourists visiting arts events went up by a staggering 81 per cent.

Best of all, perhaps, was that alongside the prestige concerts and exhibitions were a host of other events - gigs, exhibitions and theatre - which reached out to ordinary people in the city.

"It wasn't just for the bow-tie and pearls brigade," stresses Glasgow City Council spokesman Alan Forbes. "It was for everybody."

None of it came cheap. A report prepared in 1991 for Glasgow City Council, Strathclyde Regional Council and Scottish Enterprise - the organisations which mainly funded the event - revealed that more than £32m had been spent.

But it was money well spent. In purely financial terms, the report said, there had been a net profit of between £10m and £14m. Added to that, there was a jobs boom, a surge in visitor numbers and a revitalisation of the city's image and arts scene.

"There is no doubt at all that 1990 was a tremendous benefit for the city," says Alan Forbes. "It was a major factor in re-inventing the city and finding a new direction for Glasgow."

York is a very different city. It's much smaller, for a start - and it doesn't have the same huge problems that Glasgow faced at the end of the 1980s of a jobs slump caused by changing work patterns and the decline of manufacturing.

But for anyone who suspects that, despite its beauty and its wealth of heritage, York is just a little bit staid, the Glasgow experience is an exciting one.

The city council itself accepts that as a city, York is not making the most of its potential.

That was one of the reasons for the setting up of the new York Leisure Partnership - an alliance of the city council with leading figures from the arts, education and science establishments in the city - which aims to draw up by the end of next year a plan for transforming the artistic and cultural life of York.

According to Charlie Croft, one of the mottoes of the new partnership, which held its first meeting earlier this month, is: "Comfortable is not enough."

"York is a very comfortable place: but that's not enough," Mr Croft says. "It's a smashing place: but that's not enough. We need to push out the boundaries."

For a city the size of York, £32m would represent a huge investment. Even putting together a bid, with no guarantee of success, would be costly.

Ken King stresses it is not something the city council could take on its own. It would need the full support of the city's business and other communities.

How the business community would react is uncertain. Roland Harris, chief executive of the York Chamber of Commerce, says that in principle, businesses would probably support a bid - but not without a full cost-benefit analysis being done first.

"Glasgow is an enormous city compared to York," he says. "Anything we did here would have to be very different, if for no other reason than scale. But I think that in principle, we would certainly like to see this explored more fully."

Andrew Scott, head of museum at the National Railway Museum, agrees. "It is exactly the sort of thing that a city like York should be working towards," he says.

The York Leisure Partnership will ultimately decide whether or not to make a bid. Coun King hopes it will at least discuss the issue at its next meeting in September.

"I'm hopeful they will at least in principle say yes, let's consult the people of York," he says.

Given the time-scale, and the likely cost, it is unlikely that this time around York will get to the point of making a formal bid - though it would be nice to be proved wrong.

But as long as there is a proper debate on the subject, there will be benefits even if in the end no formal bid is lodged, Coun King argues.

"Whether we put a bid in or not, the main thing is waking people up to what we've got in York, and getting people involved in finding a proper cultural policy for York," he says.

Updated: 10:33 Wednesday, August 22, 2001