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

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