There was a moment in September when poet Tom McCarthy knew in his bones that Cork would win the designation as European City of Culture for 2005. It came at the end of the intense campaign initiated by former Cork City manager Jack Higgins and former arts officer Mark Mulqueen (now director of the Irish Film Centre). Both Higgins and Mulqueen had moved on, but the process they inaugurated had culminated in a small project team which included Tom McCarthy and which was now piloting the jury of international experts on a potentially decisive whistle-stop tour of the city.
There were several obvious locations: the Crawford Art Gallery, the Triskel Arts Centre, the National Institute of Choreography and Dance at the Firkin Crane, the Cork Printmakers at Wandesfords Quay, the concert hall at City Hall. That's where it happened, as McCarthy remembers it . . .
It was the day after a concert, and the great hall was being cleaned and tidied, the flowers still in place, the chandeliers alight and illuminating the decorated ceiling, the clatter of hundreds of seats being tidied away and the proscenium draped in the vast stage curtain embossed with Patrick Murray's design of the city arms. It was a coup du theatre - unplanned and incidental, yet a beacon of a city alive and going about its own cultural business. City manager Joe Gavin couldn't have made the point more plainly, even if his reference is to economic rather than artistic potential. But for this campaign the two are inseparable.
"Our proposal," he says, "is based on the inter-relationships between economic development, cultural development and image. We were able to show that Cork is going forward anyway with its own programme of sustainable development, civic enhancement, urban studies and plans as part and parcel of promoting a sense of confidence in the city, which in turn creates a climate of investment.
"Because we have the business sector on our side, we were able to include financial commitments, and while one of our objectives in seeking this designation is the impact it could have on renewal in the city, we could demonstrate that we are already planning for 20 years ahead, not just five."
The detailed proposal has a scope, inclusiveness and exactitude which are seen as flexible, indicators rather than actual destinations. It has a national - and an international - dimension. Above all, it indicates a sustainable civic future which should enhance not only the personality of the city but also the credibility of the designation itself. It was presented by a team consisting of Mary McCarthy, director of the National Sculpture Factory (NSF), Betty Dillon Hall and Noreen Mulcahy of City Hall, Tom McCarthy on secondment from the City library and City arts officer Liz Meany. The leader was Gavin, surely the only city manager in Ireland to have been involved in two simultaneous, competing campaigns for the title. His move from Galway City manager to Cork last year coincided with the decision by both cities to go after the European designation.
Talking to Gavin, you get an impression of his sense of mission. He made it clear, say those who watched the build-up and progress of the campaign, that it was inconceivable that Cork would lose. With a massive building and development programme about to be introduced, the city needs a catalyst if it is to have any sense of itself, and for Gavin, this is it. But there are other catalysts: the seminar on designing cities as part, unlikely as it seems, of this year's Cork Midsummer Festival.
A gathering of experts to discuss issues of design, planning and development in an urban context, this was the major event of the festival; it was also the harbinger of a new coalition in Cork between arts administrators and local government officers. The initiative was taken by organisers Mary McCarthy of the NSF and festival director Ted Turton. They were the ones - supported by Peter Murray of the Crawford, Nuala Fenton of the Fenton Gallery on Wandesfords Quay, and several local architects - who were articulating an idea of Cork as a space not only in which artists wanted to work but which they also wanted to influence. The seminar seemed to catch the mood of the moment.
If that seminar had a rival in the festival, it was the open-air performance by Corcadorca Theatre Company of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Cork's FitzGerald's Park. This transformation of a park made the point: spaces imaginatively used can be transformative, alerting citizens to the opportunity to re-imagine their city. And, right enough, when Gavin speaks of the resources available to the City of Culture campaign, he quotes the evidence of Mary McCarthy and Corcadorca.
There are more resources, of course, and the Cork Arts Development Committee is the game-bag from which the cultural meal of 2005 will be served up, but it seems clear that working together toward this objective forged a new relationship between City Hall and the city's arts community.
Gavin's salute to the foresight of elected council members and staff in their support of the local arts organisations is also acknowledged by Mary McCarthy. Pointing out that transport and traffic management are elements of the Cork 2005 plans, she sees the fact that the sculpture factory was originally a tramway depot as an example of civic and cultural fusion.
"City Hall has made sure that many of these buildings have remained central to the city," she says. "Look at the arts organisations now operating out of Wandesfords Quay, for example, and look at the help [City Hall] has given to the Opera House and to the Crawford gallery."
There are those who hope that the expected ratification of the jury's recommendation will allow the arts community a greater say in the proposed changes to what Mary McCarthy describes as the "lyrical geography" of Cork, but the city manager Gavin is not necessarily one of them. He agrees that the arts community has an interest in the fabric of the city, but not that it has a priority in its knowledge or understanding of planning or design. Yet he sees the creative coalition formed to achieve that European title as a coming together of people who should come together.
The initiative of City Hall in the campaign was considered a significant factor in Cork's success by the jury, and it will offer leadership and facilities from here on. It will also provide half of the £10 million budget. "A ribbon is all very well," says Tom McCarthy, "but a ribbon without a cheque isn't much good." City Hall is coming up with the cheque, and both the McCarthys on the initial team are elated by the municipal underwriting of the programme and the supporting administrative structure.
The campaign submission itself, written without professional consultation, is McCarthy's work. "I stand over all the hyperbole in it. Hyperbole doesn't disguise the truth: sometimes, and especially in Cork, you have to overstate your case in order to state your case."
The itemised proposal with its draft programme, costs, organisation and management outline, and the statement of the philosophy underpinning Cork's application, covers the years from now to 2005, and beyond. It is expansive, with plans and commitments. Gavin talks about rescuing derelict buildings; Tom McCarthy imagines the revival of Summerhill with the city's red sandstone escarpments cleaned and illuminated.
"These are interim dreams," says McCarthy. "The defining event of 2005 has not yet been conceived. But this is a deserved appellation which should forge a new resistance to the way in which the city has been marginalised, and Cork is waiting now for the biggest, most spectacular dream of itself to arrive."
