The Evaluation of the ECoC: Evolutions and Challenges

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) event is increasingly understood as an ambitious investment enabling cities to reinvent themselves. In addition to its cultural dimension, it has proved to be a key catalyst to foster social cohesion, attain economic goals and/or radically improve the image of a city. Rather than as a one-off event, the ECoC title is then perceived as an integral part of the local development strategy to pursue a variety of specific goals. Impact assessment studies help measure whether the ECoC's ambitions are truly fulfilled. As such, an increasing number of ECoCs (Glasgow 1998, Luxembourg 2007, Liverpool 2008, Essen 2010, Mons 2015 etc.) has developed indicators and methodologies to assess the impacts of the event across different dimensions (culture, economy, image, policies, etc.). Furthermore, the European Commission has introduced new assessment obligations for ECoCs post-2019. However, measuring impacts remains a challenging exercise for a number of reasons (from the shortage of data, to the lack of accuracy in defining expected impacts to the methodological pitfalls for instance in relation to the calculation of multipliers). After an introduction to the most recent trends as regards ECoC evaluation, this paper will focus on the multidimensional scope of the ECoCs' impacts. It will then present the main challenges that still remain to be faced to ensure that impacts are accurately assessed and that evaluation ultimately contributes to the development of culture-led development strategies.