Deconstructing the City of Culture: The Long-term Cultural Legacies of Glasgow 1990

This paper evaluates the success of the European Union City/Capital of Culture programme as a model for culture-led regeneration by assessing the long-term cultural impacts of Glasgow's experience in 1990. These cultural impacts, seen as distinct from economic, physical and even social impacts, are measured using soft indicators such as media and personal discourses. Assessment of cultural impacts is seldom undertaken and often dismissed as purely anecdotal in comparison with the hard evidence offered by established economic and physical impact evaluations. Here, this view is challenged and an alternative approach is offered in an exposition of the research design and main findings of a qualitative longitudinal study into the development of narratives around Glasgow's image and identity during the period 1986-2003. From this research, it emerges that the effect of regeneration on local images and identities is the strongest and best-sustained legacy of Glasgow's reign as City of Culture 15 years on.