EcocNews did not want to miss this appointment and therefore followed the presentation in presence.

There are therefore two most significant aspects of this event. The first significant aspect is the fact that the three European capitals of culture wanted to sit at the same table. Collaboration between the capitals, even requested and solicited by the European Commission, is an important aspect.

However, this was not the first time. Already in 2022 the European Capitals of Culture, Esch, Kaunas and Novi Sad presented their programme together. But they did so in Athens, a city that is symbolic for other reasons, partly because it represents the cradle of European civilisation, and partly because this competition also originated with Melina Mercouri, Greece's minister of culture in the early 1980s. Instead, Bodo, Tartu and Bad Ischl appropriately chose a hall in the European Parliament building named after Altiero Spinelli, the founding father of the European Union.

In a relaxed and joyful atmosphere, the three directors of the three European Capitals of Culture, Bodo, Bad Ischl and Tartu, presented their programmes. “The gathering's goal was to demonstrate the unity of the European Capitals of Culture, to inform the general public about the events of 2024, and to invite the audience to visit each of the three cities in the same year”, is written in a press release.

At the event on Wednesday, Tartu  2024 artistic director Kati Torp, Bødo 2024 creative director Henrik Sand Dagfinrud, and Bad Ischl 2024 artistic director Elisabeth Schweeger each introduced their programmes for the first time.

Tartu’s 2024 artistic concept is the Arts of Survival, and its programme includes 350 projects and more than 1,000 events. According to Kati Torpi, Artistic Director of Tartu 2024, Europe is currently dealing with literal survival: "People of Ukraine are fighting for survival in front of all of us, in all of our homes - in Europe. Time has taught us one of the most fundamental survival skills. Tartu and Estonia's borders are more than just physical boundaries. We live in a time when European unity and democracy are critical to the survival of culture," Torp says.

Bodø’s 2024 creative concept is ARCTICulation. The programme will feature 100 cultural projects and more than 1,000 events. Bad Ischl’s programme revolves around the concept Culture is the new salt.

The first opening ceremony will take place in Bad Ischl, Austria, on January 20. Tartu will then take the baton on January 26 with its opening ceremony, "All Becomes One," followed by the Bodø 2024 opening ceremony on February 3, in collaboration with Nordland Theatre. At the end of the presentation, after a panel that was too institutional and added little or nothing to the theme of the European Capitals of Culture, the three directors invited the audience to raise their arms and hold hands to walk towards another hall dancing to violin sounds and singing.

But beyond the various symbolic aspects, important though they are, perhaps another significant step should be imagined to make this title even more meaningful. For example, in addition to the general outlines of the respective programmes, which can in any case be easily consulted online, it would perhaps have been more useful to dwell on some of the projects in the respective programmes that see the three capitals together. In short, are there projects on which the three capitals have worked together? What are they and what values are they built on? Has a real interchange of skills and artistic projects been worked on?

Perhaps this would have been the best way to call for effective collaboration and not virtual or appearances. And if, in the aftermath of the event, a press release about the event arrives where it focuses only on one capital city and not equally on all three capitals with a press kit geared to just one city, some suspicion arises. It would probably have been useful to build a press kit with information material on all three cities and not just on one.

A second question concerns the venue and the audience. Very good the choice of the European Parliament, but who was the audience made up of? It was clearly not a press conference, but we would have expected a much larger presence of journalists and cameras. It seemed to us - but surely we are wrong - that the audience consisted of the teams from the three cities, cultural managers and a few institutional representatives.

Perhaps the citizens, the creative industries of Belgium, were missing. This is the risk one faces when choosing an institutional venue such as the European Parliament. A very strong and representative symbolic choice. But more effort is needed to involve the citizens, the so-called cultural inhabitants.

We need to widen the public space of the European Capitals of Culture, to go beyond geographical boundaries, to broaden the community dimension, to cross the most diverse sensibilities in order to bring those values that the European Capitals of Culture are imbued with into a continental dimension.

This is the extra effort that European Capitals of Culture should make.

Ecocnews, in its own small way, is trying.

Happy Capital Year in Bodo, Bad Ischl and Tartu.