An Evaluation of the Economic Impact of the UK City of Culture

<p>Since the perceived successes of Liverpool and Glasgow European Capital of Culture&nbsp;<br>(Garcia, 2005), there has been an emphasis by successive UK governments, and&nbsp;<br>particularly by those within the cultural sector to promote cultural activities as a panacea to&nbsp;<br>place based problems (Lash &amp; Urry, 1994) (Miles &amp; Paddison, 2005) By examining the bids&nbsp;<br>by applicant locations for the UK City of Culture initiative and the published information by&nbsp;<br>the awarding body, it is evident that alongside posited benefits to community cohesion, place&nbsp;<br>identity, raised profile and enrichment of the cultural life of local communities and visitors&nbsp;<br>there have also been assumptions and in many cases promises that The UK City of Culture&nbsp;<br>initiative would bring both immediate and long term economic benefits including: improved&nbsp;<br>footfall, improvements in retail vacancy rates, increased visitor numbers and improved hotel&nbsp;<br>occupancy rates, lowered unemployment rates- including specifically amongst young people,&nbsp;<br>job creation, inward investment and regeneration.<br>The following study contains quantitative analysis of evidence from bidding documents and&nbsp;<br>other sources from applicant cities bidding to become UK City of culture, in order to extract&nbsp;<br>the &ldquo;hard&rdquo; economic benefits that organisers often imply are intrinsically linked to becoming a&nbsp;<br>host city/location and aims to show whether the economic promise lives up to the hype of the&nbsp;<br>epistemological meta-narratives assigned to culture led exemplar cities (O'Dowd &amp;&nbsp;<br>Komarova, 2013).<br>A detailed examination has been made of the bid documents and surrounding literature for&nbsp;<br>the 2017 Kingston upon Hull (Hull) and 2013 Derry/Londonderry bids, examining the detail&nbsp;<br>and quantum of economic promises made in these bids and comparing this with the&nbsp;<br>statistical evidence to indicate whether hosting the UK City of Culture had the impact that&nbsp;<br>was promised. Data was drawn from UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) NOMIS national&nbsp;<br>labour statistics, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) labour and&nbsp;<br>Tourism statistics, Springboard, Centre for Cities, Local Authority and LEP (Local Enterprise&nbsp;<br>Partnership) sources to examine some of the key sustained economic improvements that&nbsp;<br>were claimed would be a result of hosting UK City of Culture in bid documents for Hull and&nbsp;<br>Derry/Londonderry relating to employment and youth employment, visitor numbers, Hotel&nbsp;<br>occupancy rates, capital investment and retail vacancy rates.<br>The results of the data show that in the areas analysed, little to no long term economic&nbsp;<br>benefits could be directly attributed to the hosting of UK City of Culture and that short term&nbsp;<br>benefits were quickly amortised and the analysis casts doubts over whether in fact there are any longer-term economic impact from hosting UK City of Culture and generates caveats as&nbsp;<br>to the validity of places legitimately using assumed long term economic benefits as an&nbsp;<br>argument to support their bids to become UK City of Culture. The results further raise the&nbsp;<br>question as to the opportunity cost of being a host city and whether the significant&nbsp;<br>investment by places in terms of money and other resources would be better spent on&nbsp;<br>directly on regeneration, stimulating job creation and inward investment rather than indirectly&nbsp;<br>with the hope that there will be an economic osmosis.</p>