History
For over two hundred years, Belfast has been a cultural and academic centre giving it the nickname the Athens of Ireland. In fact in 1841, J. Stirling Coyne wrote about Belfast "so celebrated has this town become for its patronage and love of learning, that it has acquired the proud title of the modern Athens".
In 2003, Belfast had an unsuccessful bid for the 2008 European Capital of Culture. The ambitious bid was run by an independent company called Imagine Belfast and boasted that it would "make Belfast the meeting place of Europe's legends where the meaning of history and belief find a home and a sanctuary from caricature, parody and oblivion." Belfast's bid was based on three main themes: "Through the eyes of a Child", "Made in Belfast", and "To live without walls". These themes of unity and peace and creating a better city for our children became the core of the Imagine Belfast bid. Ultimately the bid may have been wrecked by the city's history and volatile politics.
Imagine Belfast spent £1.2 million of public money and £100,000 of private funding in developing their bid. However, Belfast City Council insist this money was not wasted. The legacy of the failed bid was a new Culture and Arts Plan 2003-2006 to take forward the spirit of the Imagine Belfast bid. The Chief Executive of Belfast City Council described the bid as "a catalytic event leading to a step change in the development of arts and culture in the city". Indeed, the statistics show this to be true. In 2004-05, culture and arts events in Belfast were attended by 1.8 million people (400,000 more than the previous year). The same year, 80,000 people participated in culture and arts activities, twice as many as in 2003-04.
As Belfast becomes more prosperous and its citizens have more disposable income, culture and the arts are becoming economically important to the city. Belfast City Council has promoted culture with the goals of encouraging creativity, bringing communities together to facilitate reconciliation, and creating new jobs. In 2004-05 culture and arts initiatives created the equivalent of 413 full-time jobs (37% more than the previous year).
A combination of relative peace, international investment and an active promotion of arts and culture is attracting more tourists to Belfast than ever before. 5.9 million people visited Belfast in 2004-05 (up 10% from the previous year) and spent £262.5 million.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Belfast
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)