In Ireland, the ECOC was to be a celebration of ‘language, landscape and migration’: so much of the West as a designated Gaeltacht is devoted to the preservation of the Irish language; the west coast’s intricate waterways connect Ireland to the rest of Europe making the landscape a major historical and contemporary site for migration and the translation of culture.
Taking its lead from these themes, this special issue explores the interconnected ecosystems that make up each Capital of Culture: Europe, Cities and Education. The following set of questions are meant to engage creative responses from contributors but also to inspire other new questions from an interdisciplinary pan-European range of academics, artists, cultural workers, university administrators, postgraduate students, and community activists in fields including languages, arts, humanities, architecture, medicine, social sciences, business, politics, administration and technology.
Europe
- How has the European Union faced the challenges that the global pandemic has created?
- What are the disparities across Europe which have been highlighted in the emergency wards of hospitals, food and medical shortages?
- What about the discrepancies throughout Europe in the communication of experts vs the decisions of politicians, or the different member states? What about a common European approach?
- How can the EU be responsive to the new and urgent needs of European Union members in ways that are collective and premised on equality?
- How have the 2020 ECocs Galway and Rijeka been impacted by the pandemic and how have they adapted? What about cultural life in former ECoCs? How has the preparatory work or the bidding process in future ECoCs been affected?
- What is the future of the European Capitals of Culture project?
- What has been the experience of artists and cultural organisations during the pandemic?
- Can European Capitals of Culture benefit artists?
- How can European Capitals of Culture strengthen European cultural ties across communities in the European Union?
- How are governments and city councils responding to the crisis unleashed by the pandemic for artists, cultural workers, cultural arts organisations?
- How can the EU devise a united response to support artists and practitioners who make European Capitals of Culture possible?
Cities
- How do we see our cities and our lives now and in the future?
- How have European cities and ‘creative’ city spaces been transformed by the global pandemic?
- It is ecologically sustainable for the success of Capitals of Culture to be evaluated through the high levels of new tourism and travel?
- Is there a growing desire in local communities not to return to the environmental damage of car fueled landscapes, high carbon footprints?
- Is there less appetite for attendance at the large social cultural events such as festivals and packed gallery exhibitions?
- Are the technologies often used to track cultural touristic footfall in our cities by local councils and other private bodies including universities ethical?
- Should the success and impact of ECOC’s be determined by more nuanced qualitative forms of assessment?
- Are City Councils and private companies the best and most appropriate organisations to lead ECOC’s?
- Has the concern about Covid network tracing through privately sponsored mobile apps raised questions about privacy that might impact future evaluations of European Capitals of Culture?
Universities
- Will university campuses and the way we teach and study and interact need to be redesigned? How have online teaching and creative student assessments changed university environments?
- Has creativity and the arts found articulation in new forms of assessment and engagement?
- What creative practices and modes of communication have emerged to find articulation for the personal and public sense of anxiety or solidarity?
- What is the impact on university life?
- What is the impact on university administration and organization?
- What issues of inequality have been further revealed in our universities?
- How have universities engaged with local authorities in these times of crisis?
- How have universities encouraged forms of research that has been responsive to the needs of their local communities during the pandemic?
- How have university hospitals benefited from this research focused educationally aligned designation?
- So many arts and cultural humanities subjects are practice-based. How have changes to online learning and cultural arts engagement transformed practice-based assessment?
What might be the longer-term impact on the creative arts education in higher education? - Scholarly communities and paradigms for career success often depend on international and pan European conferences, speaker series, networks of active affiliation. How has this changed?
- Are some universities taking advantage of the pandemic to axe humanities and arts cultural focused programmes that are hard to measure in terms of economic success?
- How will public shared learning environments such as libraries adapt to the new challenges?
- Are universities marketing their programmes to international high fee-paying students in need of reform focused on their educational values, management systems and economic models for community education?
We gladly invite the following forms of multimedia and multi-lingual (with accompanying English translation) submissions:
- Research articles
- ‘Document Essays’ with curated photo-based material
- Recorded-media-based responses/provocations
- Interviews with practitioners/artists/researchers also welcome
- Visual art work (photographs, paintings, murals etc)
- Creative writing
- Manifestos
- Architectural imaginings
- Music
- Etc
Potential contributors are required to submit an abstract or proposal of 150 words along with a short biography by 31 August. The special issue will be published under the auspices of the Centre for Creative Arts Research at NUI Galway’s Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies.
Full submissions with agreement for online publication due 15 October 2020. Please send any enquiries and abstracts to the editorial team through: