Security not an issue for British culture judging panel

THE panel that will decide whether Londonderry should become UK City of Culture 2013 appears to have been convinced that security will not be an issue.

Speaking to the Culture, Arts and Leisure committee last week, the town clerk and chief executive of Derry City Council, Valeria Watts said the City of Culture judges asked no questions about security issues when the Londonderry team made its final presentation the previous week.

The city has made the four-strong shortlist from which UK City of Culture 2013 will be selected, and a team recently went to Liverpool to deliver their final pitch.

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Ms Watts was part of the team, as was Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and junior OFMDFM minister Robin Newton.

Outlining details of the presentation in Liverpool she told the committee that there were a lot of questions about the politics of the city but suggested that the bid had convinced the judges there would be no security issues.

She said that the Londonderry delegation had been worried about what might happen on the Tuesday they were due to leave for Liverpool - which was when the Saville report into the events of Bloody Sunday was released.

She said: "To be perfectly honest there was a nervousness around the events that happened in the city on the Tuesday and then us leaving on Tuesday evening to go to Liverpool to participate in the process from the Wednesday right through to Thursday lunchtime.

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"But in actual fact we felt that we could not have had any better backdrop for going to present the bid.

"I want to stress to members that there was a difficult tension to be managed about the outcome of the Saville Inquiry which was very serious in nature with many expectations riding on the back of that and how the city handled that vis-a-vis almost the joyous or celebratory nature of getting through to the final four cities for UK City of Culture 2013.

"But all of the feedback that we have received has more or less stated or reconfirmed in our mind's eye that the way the city handled itself on Tuesday showed that it is a city that has reached a certain level of maturity and it placed Derry-Londonderry on a world stage that day. Everyone in the world knew exactly where our city was."

Ms Watts added that the judging panel asked questions about the "peripherality" of Londonderry, being placed "almost on the outer boundary of the UK".

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But she said: "We do not see it that way but in terms of our nine million diaspora from the North West, the 36 million diaspora from the whole island of Ireland: if we look to drawing a very high percentage of that diaspora back into the city as a landing point, then the visitors will then radiate out to other cities in Scotland, England and Wales for their visit back home, so to speak."

The town clerk went on: "There is always tensions to be managed in any city and we had a huge section in the bid about risk and contingency and we did expect some very detailed questions about how we would handle security. But the world works in mysterious ways.

"The Sunday evening before we went to Liverpool to present that bid, there were three people shot in an arts and cultural venue in Birmingham which was one of the competing cities.

"We didn't get any questions about security, we didn't get any questions about the finances of the bid, we didn't get any questions about other elements of the bid that we were expecting very, very detailed questions on, but the panel more or less opened the questions that they did ask by saying; 'You've convinced us of that. We know what it's going to do for the city, we know what it's going to do for the region'. But they did ask us a lot about leadership specifically."

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Ms Watts also told the Stormont committee that the support in Northern Ireland and elsewhere for Londonderry's bid to become City of Culture had been "phenomenal" and that Snow Patrol had given permission for their song, 'Just Say Yes' to be used.