Last week, it actually made me a little sad to wander into the city centre and notice the excitement from the previous week dying down.
We poured so much energy into writing about the city, community work, promoting new talent at an increasing rate, and capitalising on the potential of both our citizens and our landscapes to ensure we landed the City Of Culture title. Winning such an honour put the whole of Derry on the map in a way previously never thought possible.
What happened next was inevitable.
The activity on the City Of Culture 2013 Facebook page has decreased significantly, and more and more social networkers are removing the City Of Culture badges and insignia from their profile pictures. Unfortunate echoes of Ghostbusters abound, where the heroes found themselves back at square one, or worse, after enjoying their moment in the spotlight.
What we have to do now is ensure we don’t conjure up any white elephants – or marshmallow men, if you prefer – in our next step. Fame is fleeting, and the legacy left by our very recent triumph can so easily fade away in time unless developments – architectural, cultural and social – are built to last. We need to make sure people are looking as positively at Derry in 2015 as in 2013.
It took several glances around the Guildhall Square on City Of Culture Celebration Day (documented in these fine photos), in addition to Mayor Colum Eastwood’s excellent piece on this website, to convince me that the foundations were already being laid.
In the morning I had the chance to see potential football stars and artists of the future impress us with their skills, thanks to the Soccer Summer Camp and Kid Art. Outside the City Of Culture office, the likes of Here Comes The Landed Gentry and later Breakdown Asylum enhanced their standings with enthusiastic sets, with the Craic Pack giving us The Alternative Derry News in between. In fact, listening to Breakdown Asylum gave me another brain wave – how about a “City Of Culture Infinite Play List”?
I’m a firm believer in music’s uncanny ability to both unite people and spread a message. As Oliver Sacks rightly put it, music “invades and involves us. It infects and affects us like no other art.” The song “Just Say Yes”, with its upbeat nature and relevant lyrics (“Just say there’s nothing holding you back…”) was as much, if not more, a part of our promotional campaign than the “Voices” video.
In my opinion, though, another Snow Patrol song, “Take Back The City”, would also have been a good promotional tune (“I love the city tonight, I love the city always…”). And, looking past promotion, why not consider Cara Dillon’s “The Streets Of Derry”, Bronagh Gallagher & Paul Casey’s rendition of “Our Town”, or The Divine Comedy’s spectacular, and moving, “Sunrise”?
And even these are only a handful of the songs that could be considered for such a play list. My latest stop at the Glasgowbury festival this weekend opened my eyes to a host of local talent looking to bring themselves to the fore. What better time to do so than now, especially in the aftermath of a City Of Culture victory?
With all of this in mind, there is no doubt that Derry’s real cultural journey has only just begun.
