UNESCO Cities of Literature: More than a Brand?
When we think of a literary city, we think of places like Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Washington D.C., or Stockholm, and only because of the famous authors that wrote and published there. Apparently, however, there is an official list of Cities of Literature created and chosen by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). In this piece, Emanda Percival asks what value has been added to the efforts of these cities after taking up the title.
I regularly walk past the UNESCO City of Literature plaque in downtown Reykjavik, but although I am involved in the literary world, I’ve never really been sure of what being a literary city means. Did the city have to meet specific targets? Did being part of a UNESCO group add something to the city other than the plaque? Should I, as a regular resident, be conscious of being in a city of literature, or was it no more than a label to be used in marketing? In short, I was clueless as to what it meant to be a City of Literature. This article attempts to answer these questions.
I had hoped, when I began researching, that what I learned of literary cities would equate to stumbling upon a library of unexpected beauty whose walls echoed with the power of centuries spent in silence and learning like Melk in Austria. It was not to be; instead, my overall feeling equates to a beautiful building, with empty shelves, comfortable reading chairs, and no books. The idea is there, but for now, it is hollow.
How cities strategise and what policies they develop affects the culture, innovation, economy and well-being of its citizens, and because cities house the majority of the world’s population their strategies also affect the perceptions of a country’s culture as a whole. Bodies like UNESCO’s Cities of Literature program were created with the aim to offer “unparalleled opportunities for cities to draw on peer learning processes and collaborative projects.” [EP1] They wanted to ensure cities focused future strategies on culture and creativity, and through international connections improved their ability to realise these aims. Cities who join the network make commitments to do just this, creating policies around cultural heritage, creativity, and global networking; these commitments range from the simple: library access to all, sponsorship of translations of multicultural literature, increased bookshops and literary events; to the complicated: offering safe harbour for writers persecuted by their own countries. But, many of the cities with the UNESCO title had already created and were achieving their most innovative goals long before joining. From the limited reporting I have access to, it is difficult to see what the UNESCO’s Cities of Literature brand has added to the cities themselves, or whether it is reaching its own organisational targets. It leaves me with the sense UNESCO is currently little more than a city plaque with a list of promises attached.
Exploring the overarching banner of the UNESCO brand has given me a better idea of what Cities of Literature are, theoretically, but how did this roll down to individual cities? Were they meeting the promised targets? Were they making a difference to the lives of their citizens or just increasing the wealth of a few? Hoping to answer these new questions I looked at three of the twenty UNESCO Cities of Literature.
Edinburgh, Scotland was the first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. A few years earlier they had approached UNESCO with the aim of creating a network of international literary cities; UNESCO liked the idea. It’s not really surprising that Edinburgh became a literary city; not only does it have a long history of literary heroes that are recognised and rejoiced by the residents, i.e. Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert Louise Stevenson, but also a long history as a setting for novels like Ian Rankin’s detective series, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Anyone who has been to the city with its grey stone architecture, vibrant ghost community and haunting weather doesn’t need to be aware of the literary world to sense the stories, real and imagined, fighting to be heard in the cobbled stone paths and castle turrets. For Edinburgh, motivation for becoming a literary city was about sharing their literary legacy with the wider world and validating the work they were already doing. Edinburgh’s prominence in the international literary community is not reflected internally; even those that work in the literary scene specifically focusing on UNESCO-branded activities admit, ‘If you live in Edinburgh you may never know it is a literary city’. I speculate this lack of local visibility is in part because many of the shared parameters for all UNESCO Cities of Literature are understated in their prominence while being completely visible in the everyday. For example the increase in bookshops, active efforts in translating literature from multiple cultures into the language of the literary city, and changes in education to support literary arts, are things that would appear in the city without much fanfare to celebrate their arrival. However, considering another of the shared goals of the UNESCO project is to generate literary culture for residents, it seems this absence of internal recognition is less than ideal.
One of UNESCOs requirements for holding the title of City of Literature is to submit a monitoring report on their activities every four years, Edinburgh is one of the few cities I managed to access this report for; I opened it with a twinge of anticipation, hoping to see evidence of the UNESCO brand benefit. I did not; the report is a high-level description of events, actions and international meetings the Edinburgh group has implemented in the previous four years. It was encouraging to read about the initiatives, but with no corroborating data it was hard to see if any of them had improved the cultural life of the residents. Without that data how could Edinburgh ensure success of future strategies added to the city’s literary life, and how could they share their learnings to assist other Cities of Literature with their own planning?
“Anyone who has been to the city with its grey stone architecture, vibrant ghost community and haunting weather doesn’t need to be aware of the literary world to sense the stories, real and imagined, fighting to be heard in the cobbled stone paths and castle turrets.”
In a similar way to Edinburgh, the French city of Angoulême is visually inspiring. White stone buildings and red-tiled roofs demark streets winding back from the Charente River. Bridges cascading in greenery and shaded promenades echo with a touch of the ancient, while perspective-disturbing murals filling the blank canvases of flat walls remind the visitor it is a modern city. Angoulême became part of the world literature scene through papermaking; an industry it has fostered since the 16th century. It is the only French UNESCO City of Literature. I was surprised by this; I’d imagined Paris would also be one considering its prolific bookselling streets and stores, libraries, writers like Simone de Beauvoir, and general literary history, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Cities joining the UNESCO brand are in part driven by an ambition to create new or different economic growth by focusing on cultural heritage and international connections. A city such as Paris has the population to support multiple areas of economic growth, while Angoulême being smaller would need a more singular strategic approach. They chose to focus on their cultural heritage, in particular the literary field of comics. Angoulême holds one of the most important comic book festivals internationally. Like Edinburgh’s literary history, this interest in comics did not start as a result of Angoulême’s involvement with UNESCO, but because of innovations the city made in the 1970s to aid its struggling publishing industry. Before applying to be part of UNESCO in 2019, Angoulême had spent 50 years building their international reputation and focusing cultural energy within the city towards literature and comics in particular, including: the annual Comic Strip festival, French film festival, educational changes that facilitate arts and comic book creation, plus other initiatives designed to support artists and writers financially. Their proposal to enter the UNESCO City of Literature promised a continuance of many of these active projects. Having only two years within the UNESCO brand – and one of those years being a pandemic – it is not surprising Angoulême has no reports to quantify their proposed targets. But, it will be interesting to see over then next few years, if joining UNESCO makes a difference to Angoulême’s already active cultural goals. Considering most of the activities they proposed in their application to UNESCO were already functioning well, it will likely be difficult to demonstrate what difference the UNESCO brand has brought to the city.
The Slovenian city of Ljubljana circles out from a forested hill. The castle looks down at the trees and red roofs of the city as if the castle were an author looking at the world of its characters, able to reach out occasionally, but separate from the story. The river is controlled by stone; stone bridges crisscross the green water, stone walls keep it running on its unchanging course, curving through the middle of the city; it is a city that feels built for fairy tales. Ljubljana has been within the literary sphere since medieval times (same city, different names of course) with a multitude of authors both born and/or inspired there. Like Edinburgh and Angoulême, Ljubljana was active in improving their literary culture long before joining UNESCO. Along with an aim to increase reading practices in younger generations and in families through library initiatives, youth book festivals and ‘the library under the treetops’, Ljubljana also offers refuge to international writers persecuted by their own countries (through the ICORN network). However, they’ve been doing that since 2011, only joining UNESCO in 2015. I was unable to access Ljubljana’s report to UNESCO on their achievements in the past 5 years, and unable to find any other reports or reviews that demonstrate the benefits of joining the brand.
The “Library Under the Trees” in Ljubljana – gorgeous!
Not being able to find reports that examine the UNESCO Cities of Literary program and answer my questions about it has been my biggest struggle in writing this article. The UNESCO site has them listed by PDF title, but due to a fault on the system they are inaccessible, and the one that was (Edinburgh), was unsupported by evidence. The two reports I found that have examined the program were both conducted independently from UNESCO or any of the cities in the program. Both reports noted a concern in the lack of reporting and data being produced to quantify the UNESCO Cities of Literary program, and more specifically a lack of agreement between involved cities as to how to reach their common UNESCO-aligned goals. I’ve never been one to enjoy writing a report or reading data, but with an international program such as UNESO Cities of Literature I am struck by how important reporting is to achieve the, I think, culturally transformative ambitions the brand has and my own feelings echo the concerns of the independent reviews; that the program is promising, but not delivering enough on its promises.
From this rabbit hole of research I have answered my original question of what a UNESCO city of literature is: a commitment from titled cities to set long term goals of creating strategies that improve their literary industries, sharing know-how with fellow cities under the brand, generating literary culture and environment for residents and visitors, and garnering international recognition as an international literary centre. As this is more closely related to governance than the everyday life of residents, it is not surprising I have spent so many years walking past a plaque proclaiming I live in a city of literature without any idea of what that actually meant. What I didn’t expect to discover was a new appreciation for reporting, because without it, the UNESCO Cities of Literature program is missing opportunities to be something that reverberates because of what it adds to literary culture, rather than echoing because it is as hollow as a bookless library. But, it is relatively young for a program of this size, only 16 years old, and that gives me hope the organisation will one day fill its proverbial library and bring something lasting to international literary culture other than a brand.