MinskHi all,

Find below the EHU students’ project on imagining Minsk as European Capital of Culture.

This is part of the course on critical urbanism taught by Ben and Siarhej at EHU.

Comments and questions are warmly welcome. For your convenience the file is also attached.

However, please, do not distribute the file without authors permission.

Minsk – Stolica Kultury Evropy

The following is a brief account of an exercise imagining that Minsk might be European Capital of Culture. We considered three stages of the process: 1) how to present a bid for Minsk to be Capital of Culture; 2) what the event Minsk European Capital of Culture might include and 3) a review section assessing possible plusses and minuses of the event.

1. Bidding for Minsk

2 ideas –

a. Minsk – Sovietski Gorod

Idea of building on what is there, on Minsk’s specificity, on using its heritage as Soviet utopia as brand, and selling the event both internationally and within Belarus. Would include artists of Social Realism and of war. Also the question was raised of hi-tech in relation to this legacy.

b. Minsk – Molodaya Evropa

Build on the idea of a ‘kaloritny underground’ as a key element of Minsk’s post-sovietness and would seek to highlight and extend the existing network of small clubs.

In the discussions between these 2 options, the issue of trying to appeal both to European tourists and to Moscow was raised.

2. What would Minsk Stolica Kultury Evropy include?

Event slogan: Industry, Folk, Ecology

Idea to use Minsk’s industrial heritage as a setting for musical and ecological events building community and social/ecological consciousness.

Eg: street festivals on streets in run-down industrial districts of the city

Rock festival on the mountain of ‘musor’ on the outskirts of the city (festival itself as creator of musor on the mountain of musor).

In now unused estates/institutions (usadbach) around Minsk.

Putting spotlight on Minsk’s waterways.

‘Nedostroiki’ – which are now places of ‘neformalnie tusovki’ also to be used for artistic/music events.

In discussions, emerged the question of what is a city and what is outside a city? Also limits and potential of using festival/event as a motor of change.

3. Expected +’s and –’s of Minsk Stolica Kultury Evropy

+’s

  1. City made attractive for tourists

  2. Development of infrastructure

  3. Work on the beauty of the city

  4. Psychological – ‘we are a cultural capital’

  5. Development of myths about Minsk (currently not very positive)

  6. Administration – change of mindset

  7. Keeping cultural elite in Minsk

  8. Creating new cultural forms

  9. Local activism

  10. Citizen engagement

  11. Creating chaos in an orderly city

  12. Will make obvious the current lack of culture

-’s

1. Will make obvious the current lack of culture

2. Changing local way of life

3. Only facades will be improved

4. Capital investment in event would suck money from elsewhere

5. Question of control

6. Rubbish

7. Destroy our ‘nice peaceful way of life in Belarus’

8. It will turn out just like always

9. Introduce a competitive comparative element – was Minsk as good as other cities?

10. The authorities will shut it down

11. It will be of interest only to small circle of people