Pop the champagne, Hobart is a UNESCO City of Literature! After a lot of hard work from the local literary community, we've been accepted.
I read this announcement with joy, but after a small celebration, I realised I had no idea what that meant. Other than a new plaque, does it add something to the city? As a resident, should I be conscious of being in a city of literature, or is it a marketing label? In short, I was clueless. This article attempts to answer these questions.
I had hoped what I learned of literary cities would equate to a jumbled bookstore filled with unexpected treasures and a bookseller who could guide you through the stories of centuries into new territories. Instead, my overall feeling equates to a beautiful building, comfortable chairs, and no books. The promise is there, but it is waiting to be filled.
How cities strategise and what policies they develop affects the culture, innovation, economy and well-being of its citizens. Because cities house the majority of the world's population, their strategies also affect the perceptions of a country's culture as a whole. UNESCO's Cities of Literature program was created with the aim to offer "unparalleled opportunities for cities to draw on peer learning processes and collaborative projects".[i]
They wanted to ensure cities focused future strategies on culture and creativity and, through international connections, improve their ability to realise these aims. By joining the UNESCO Creative Cities network (Cities of Literature is one branch of this broader program), Hobart has made a commitment to create policies around cultural heritage, creativity and global networking.
Two key goals mentioned in acceptance speeches are to improve Tasmania's literacy rates and support writing in the palawa kani language. These are significant commitments. How can Hobart ensure it achieves them? Will they be making a difference in the lives of Tasmanians or just increasing the wealth of a few?
Armed with this broad understanding of the UNESCO brand, I decided to explore the possible benefits and pitfalls waiting for Hobart by visiting three of the 42[ii] established UNESCO Cities of Literature.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh 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, and 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 in by the residents (Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Dyle, Kenneth Grahame, JK Rowling) but also a long history as a setting for novels (Ian Rankin's detective series, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, 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, the motivation to become 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 who 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 of UNESCO Cities of Literature are understated in their prominence while being completely visible in the everyday. For example, the increase in bookshops, efforts in translating literature from multiple cultures and changes in education to support literary arts are things that would appear without much fanfare. However, considering another of the shared goals of the UNESCO project is to generate literary culture for residents, this absence of internal recognition is less than ideal.
One of UNESCO's requirements for holding the title of City of Literature is to submit a monitoring report every four years. I opened Edinburgh's latest report with a twinge of anticipation, hoping to see evidence of the UNESCO brand benefit.
The report[iii] gives brief, high-level descriptions of projects, events and international meetings the Edinburgh group has implemented in the previous four years. It was encouraging to read about the initiatives and how they aligned with UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals, but the brevity and lack of corroborating data made it difficult to know the effect on the cultural life of the residents. Without conducting surveys and accruing data, how could Edinburgh ensure the 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?
Angoulême, France
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 cascade in greenery while perspective-disturbing murals fill the canvases of flat walls.
Angoulême became part of the world literature scene through papermaking, an industry it has fostered since the 16th century. 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. Angoulême chose to focus on its cultural heritage, in particular the literary field of comics. It 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 an international reputation and focusing cultural energy within the city towards literature, and comics in particular, including: the annual Comic Strip festival, education that facilitates arts and comic book creation, plus other initiatives designed to support artists and writers financially. Their proposal to enter the UNESCO brand promised a continuance of many of these active projects. It will be interesting to see over the next few years whether becoming a City of Literature makes a difference to Angoulême's cultural goals. Considering most of the activities they proposed in their application to UNESCO were already functioning well, it may be difficult to demonstrate what the UNESCO brand has brought to the city.
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Ljubljana circles out from a forested hill. The castle looks down at the trees and red roofs of the city like an author looking at the world of their characters. The river curves through the middle, controlled by stone walls to keep it running on its unchanging course. It's a city 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 its literary culture long before joining UNESCO. Along with library initiatives to increase reading practices in younger generations and families, 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). They've been doing that since 2011, only joining UNESCO in 2015.
Ljubljana's 2019 report was a 26-page demonstration of literary momentum. The litany of literary projects of the past four years (I counted 39) infiltrated all levels of the local and international community – such as developing a comics education program in partnership with Angoulême. The report[iv] provided little hard data but did include how their literary ambitions integrated with other government policies.
Hobart
It is clear why Hobart makes a good addition to the City of Literature brand. There are established literary programs and groups to support creatives. And the picturesque landscape of sandstone buildings wedged between the Derwent and kunanyi is an inspiring visual narrative between First Nations culture and colonisation. A plaque will look good here.
As a UNESCO City of Literature, Hobart is now committed to building strategies that improve their literary industries, sharing know-how with fellow cities under the brand, generating literary culture for residents and visitors, and garnering international recognition as a literary centre. Hobart is also expected to report on all of it. An unexpected discovery in my research was a new appreciation for reporting. Without data, 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 bookshop. However, for a program of this size, it is relatively young (only 19 years), so there is hope the organisation will one day fill its metaphoric shelves and bring something lasting to international literary culture.
Hopefully, Hobart will be one of the cities to instigate the shift from a wonderful idea to a deep-seated developer of literature-rich community.
Emanda Percival is an Australian who finds herself living between two islands, Tasmania, and Iceland. She spends her time writing, teaching creative writing, and exploring wild landscapes and wilder books. She has had a few things published and is working towards publishing a few more.
[i] https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/content/why-creativity-why-cities
[ii] https://www.citiesoflit.com
[iii] https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/sites/default/files/edinburgh_-_unesco_monitoring_report_2017-2020_final-compressed_0.pdf
[iv] https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/sites/default/files/ljubljana_monitoring_report_2019_0.pdf