coalture and coweography

By Catherine Jones on Oct 15, 08 08:30 AM

It's interesting to see another city prepare to be Capital of Culture.
We've been so engrossed in our own build up and the year itself, it's easy to forget there are several other "Liverpools" out there all doing the same thing.
I went to one of them - Essen (technically they are RUHR:2010, covering 53 cities and towns in Germany) - on Monday to hear the creative team unveil the first tranche of their programme.
The press conference was held on the site of a former coal pit, now a World Heritage Site.

What was interesting was they are preoccupied with just the same issues we were/are - the breadth of the programme, the promises made and can they be kept, the funding and spending!
It's a tough financial climate in which to be trying to find willing sponsors for culture at the moment. They have two signed up so far and are negotiating with three more.
Mind you, it's a problem facing Liverpool with the twin whammys of the olympics and the credit crunch.
The Ruhr programme sounds interesting (not least closing 60km of autobahn and having a giant party with 30,000 tables. we'll see if that one comes off).
I also chatted to a guy who led the Rotterdam year of culture back in 2001 about the lessons learned and - the word I loathe just slightly less than cultural "offer" - LEGACY of the title.
We sat in the autumn sunshine outside the renovated coal pit buildings, which are now a bit like Quarry Bank Mill or Ironbridge and filled with shops, museums and cafes, and discovered that we're all pretty much in the same boat.
In a strange way, that's heartening, the shared experience.
I was off work last week, but I also managed a trip to London to see MOMIX's Lunar Sea which comes to the Empire at the end of October.
Its choreographer Miles Pendleton is a funny guy. You can read more of what he said on tomorrow's 08 page, but he started his career by choreograping his family's herd of cattle. He described it as "coweography."
There are no cows in Lunar Sea, not even jumping over the moon.
But it's still a vision to behold.