IV. Towards Guimarães 2020 “How can this moment – because it is just a moment, a year is never longer than 12 months… – be not just a moment but a part of a process of a sustainable change in the city?”16 (Kathrin Deventer) As we said at the beginning, a reflection on what happened only a few months after Guimarães 2012 came to an end would always be an unfinished exercise. And the issue we are dealing with is more intangible than easily subject to measurable evaluations. That is why we have tried to focus more than on impacts, on sparks of future; we decided highlight some questions that should be asked right now that will have to be answered in 2020, which is more or less the next milestone for Guimarães. And that is how we have finally come to the word ‘legacy’. The word legacy is high on the agenda of criteria of the European Commission, of the evaluators and experts, of the political decisionmakers, of the project managers. But it is not always clear that the cities really know what it means. ‘Legacy’ has to do with the thinking before the year. Is there a policy or are their proposals that already before the ECoC have been developed on what to do after the year? Is there a budget for all the venues and the new initiatives? Is there a budget to keep up the momentum and further explore the energy that was created? And if there is a budget, who decides upon it? And, above all, who are actually the ones taking responsibility for the implementation of the follow up? As Nele Hertling, co-founder of A Soul for Europe, when looking back at the various ECoCs that she has been involved with, puts it: “My life-long experience tells me that you can start quite a lot of things, generate a lot of energy, but if there is nobody taking an eye, following up, securing continuity because they believe in the results, you are then quickly lost.”17
16
Quote from the footage of the forum ‘The Guimarães Conversations’ on 17th May 2013.
17
Quote from the footage of the forum ‘The Guimarães Conversations’ on 17th May 2013.
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