2008 September

This blog provides a selection of articles posted under the various thematic blogs at BLOG2.013. Blog2.013 is an open and critical media space where you can find all sorts of audio productions, texts and images produced by Radio Grenouille, the radio station devoted to culture, as well as by various organisations and artists in Marseille and the surrounding region of Provence. Interviews, lectures, utopian projects, recordings of oral traditions, stories and music, walks, creative work and analysis, BLOG 2.013 documents Marseille and the Mediterranean and gives it a voice, together with the city’s artists, residents, challenges and paradoxes.

11 Sep 20080

From Liverpool 2008 to Marseille 2013

The impact of European Capitals of Culture

Impact 08 is a research programme set up as part of Liverpool 2008, European Capital of Culture. The idea is to assess the long-term effects of such an event…
Beatriz Garcia, the programme manager, recently came to Marseille. Invited by Marseille Provence 2013, she met a variety of operators (Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Marseille, ARCADE, town planning offices for the urban areas of Marseille and Toulon, etc.) with a view to keeping dialogue open into the crucial issues surrounding the assessment of cultural events.

Listen: an interview with Beatriz Garcia, conducted by Fred Kahn and Célia Pascaud, presenting the Impact 08 programme

Beatriz Garcia presents the Impact 08 research programme [in French - 3mn01]: Play Now | Play in Popup

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1 Sep 20081

« Cities on the edge »

Interview with Franco Bianchini

Franco Bianchini is Professor and Director of Research at Leicester and Leeds Universities. He specialises in cultural and urban policy. He is also deeply involved in the “Cities on the edge” programme, the cities network initiated by Liverpool, European Capital of Culture in 2008, together with Marseille, Bremen, Gdansk, Istanbul and Naples. Franco Bianchini is convinced that it is usually at the edges of a city that innovation and a feeling of centrality are generated.

“Cities on the Edge is the most Europe-oriented programme in Liverpool for 2008,” Franco Bianchini told us. “It was set up in 2004 and includes six port cities that all have a very strong sense of identity and experience very similar problems, especially in terms of image. They all have economic problems and have highly ambiguous, not to say conflict-ridden relationships with the capital of the country in which they are located.”

In Franco Bianchini’s eyes, being on the edge is often synonymous with trend-setting and innovation. “We have explored the concept of “cities on the edge” in political, geographical, social and artistic terms. We began with the idea of an opera. Then we held a series of lectures on crime, interculturality, setting up programmes on “rebel reading”, urban music and the theatre of immigration, among other subjects. We have also developed a project called “Street philosophy” involving people that live and work on the streets: prostitutes, taxi drivers, street hawkers, etc. The Marseille film director, Thierry Aguila, is currently shooting a film on football supporters and their passionate, practically religious relationship with the game. Other projects will be launched in 2009, to be led by Marseille. After that, it will be Istanbul’s turn in 2010, followed by Bremen and Gdansk in 2011 and Naples in 2012.”

Listen: A brief overview of the Cities on the Edge programme and some of the past and future events and projects, taken from an interview with Franco Bianchini