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Culture and Sustainability in
European Cities

European cities are contributing to the development of a more sustainable urban

system that is capable of coping with economic crises, ecological challenges, and
social disparities in different nation-states and regions throughout Europe.
This book reveals in a pluralistic way how European cities are generating new
approaches to their sustainable development, and the special contribution of
culture to these processes. It addresses both a deficit of attention to small and
medium-sized cities in the framework of European sustainable development and
an underestimation of the role of culture, artistic expression, and creativity for
integrated development of the city as a prerequisite to urban sustainability. On
the basis of a broad collection of case studies throughout Europe, representing
a variety of regionally specific cultural models of sustainable development, the
book investigates how participative culture, community arts, and, more generally,
creativity of civic imagination are conducive to the goal of a sustainable future
for small and medium-sized cities.
This is an essential volume for researchers and postgraduate students in urban
studies, cultural studies, cultural geography, and urban sociology, as well as for
policy makers and practitioners wanting to understand the specificity of European
cities as hubs of innovation, creativity, and artistic industriousness.

Svetlana Hristova is Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Cultural

Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts in the South-West University in Blago-
evgrad, Bulgaria, and Chair of the ENCATC Thematic Area “Urban Manage-
ment and Cultural Policies of City.”

Milena Dragićević Šešić is Head of the UNESCO Chair in Interculturalism,

Art Management and Mediation, and Professor of Cultural Policy and Cultural
Management, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies at the University of Arts, Bel-
grade, Serbia.

Nancy Duxbury is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University
of Coimbra, Portugal, and Co-Coordinator of its Cities, Cultures and Architecture
Research Group. She is also Adjunct Professor of the School of Communication,
Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Routledge Studies in Culture
and Sustainable Development

Culture as an aspect of sustainability is a relatively new phenomenon but is begin-

ning to attract attention among scholars and policy makers. This series opens up
a forum for debate about the role of culture in sustainable development, treat-
ing culture and sustainability as a meta-narrative that will bring together diverse
disciplines. Key questions explored in this series will include: how should culture
be applied in sustainability policies; what should be sustained in culture; what
should culture sustain; and what is the relationship of culture to other dimensions
of sustainability?
Books in the series will have a variety of geographical foci and reflect dif-
ferent disciplinary approaches (for example, geography, sociology sustainability
science, environmental and political sciences, anthropology, history, archaeology,
and planning). The series will be addressed in particular to postgraduate students
and researchers from a wide cross-section of disciplines.

Series Editors:
Katriina Soini, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and
Natural Resources Institute Finland
Joost Dessein, ILVO, Ghent University, Belgium

Culture and Sustainability in European Cities

Imagining Europolis
Edited by Svetlana Hristova, Milena Dragićević Šešić, and Nancy Duxbury

Theory and Practice in Heritage and Sustainability

Between past and future
Edited by Elizabeth Auclair and Graham Fairclough

Cultural Sustainability and Regional Development

Theories and practices of territorialisation
Edited by Joost Dessein, Elena Battaglini, and Lummina Horlings
“ ‘Imagining Europolis’ comes at a moment when more than ever we need – at
EU level – to collectively build a common civic space where European citizens
can discuss and reflect on crucial issues for the further development of our Euro-
pean project. The book clearly contributes to this endeavour. My thanks to the
authors!”
– Sylvain Pasqua, Senior Expert in EU Cultural Policies in the
European Commission, Coordinator of the “European
Capitals of Culture” Scheme of the European Union

“This is a very timely book that gathers many distinguished contributors on a

hot topic such as sustainable culture-led development in small and medium-sized
European cities – the true backbone of Europe. Research, fresh ideas, and expe-
riences in this field are much needed in the Europe of today. Warmly recom-
mended reading.”
– Pier Luigi Sacco, Professor of Cultural Economics, IULM University,
Milan, Italy; Member of the Technical-Scientific Committee on Cultural
Economics of the Italian Ministry of Culture and Heritage

“The complex cultural dimensions of the urban condition today and of the
theory and practice of sustainability are topics hampered by commonplace as
well as wishful if not incantatory thinking. The essays in this truly significant
volume on European cities break exciting new ground, however. They provide a
rich template for far more informed and fruitful debate.”
– Yudhishthir Raj Isar, Professor of Cultural Policy Studies,
The American University of Paris, France; Institute for Culture
and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia

“ ‘Imagining Europolis’ shows compellingly how a number of the continent’s

small and medium-sized cities offer key creative, imaginative, and participatory
models for a culture-based sustainable urbanism while clearly theorizing ever-
present tensions and faultlines. In its models for sustainable city co-creation the
book offers valuable lessons for cities everywhere, including the urban behemoth
Cosmopolis.”
– Greg Young, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional
Planning, University of Sydney, Australia
This page intentionally left blank
Culture and Sustainability in
European Cities
Imagining Europolis

Edited by Svetlana Hristova,

Milena Dragićević Šešić, and
Nancy Duxbury
First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Svetlana Hristova, Milena Dragićević Šešić, and Nancy Duxbury
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cultural sustainability in European cities : imagining Europolis / edited by
Svetlana Hristova, Milena Dragićević Šešić, and Nancy Duxbury.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Europe—Cultural policy. 2. Europe—Civilization. 3. Urban
policy—Europe. 4. Sustainability—Europe. 5. Sustainable urban
development—Europe. I. Hristova Svetlana. II. Dragićević Šešić,
Milena, 1954– III. Duxbury, Nancy.
D1055.C826 2015
306.094—dc23
2015001186
ISBN: 978-1-138-77841-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77202-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Goudy
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

COST statement x
Series introduction by Katriina Soini and Joost Dessein xi
List of figures and tables xiii
Notes on contributors xv

Introduction 1
S V E T L A N A H RI S TOVA, MI L E NA DRAGI Ć E VI Ć Š EŠIĆ,
A N D N A N C Y DUXB URY

SECTION I
Culture and sustainable development of European cities:
what are the issues? 15

1 Cultural sustainability in small and medium-sized cities:

what are the issues? 17
H E L M U T K . A NHE I E R AND MI CHAE L HOE L S CHER

2 Civic urbanity: looking at the city afresh 32

C H A R L E S L A NDRY

3 We, European cities and towns: the role of culture for

the evolving European model of urban sustainability 42
S V E T L A N A H RI S TOVA

4 Culture, quality of life, and sustainable urban

development 55
A L D O M I L O H NI Ć
viii Contents
SECTION II
Europolis as a project: envisioning more sustainable cities 67

5 European cities as cultural projects: where is culture

in urban sustainability policy? 69
N A N C Y D U X B URY

6 Culture in development strategies of small and medium-sized

European cities: a comparative analysis 86
E L I S A B E T E C AL DE I RA NE TO TOMAZ

7 Cultural policy making by networking: local cooperation and

global competition in small and medium-sized Italian cities 100
D AV I D E P O NZ I NI

8 European Capitals of Culture and urban diplomacy 112

R O L F H U G OS ON

SECTION III
Culture for sustainable development in urban policies
and practices 125

9 A place in the city: recognizing creative inclusion 127

F R A N Ç O I S MATARAS S O

10 Cultural access and activation: civic participation in local

sustainable communities 141
A N I TA K A N GAS AND S AKARI AS S OKKA

11 Provincial Poland: sustainable development and culture in

small and medium-sized towns 154
K ATA R Z Y N A P L E B AŃCZ Y K

12 Culture, sustainable development, and innovation: the case

of Norrby, Sweden 166
J E N N Y J O H ANNI S S ON

13 The town is the venue: “place-making” at the heart

of cultural policy 178
D AV I D S T E VE NS ON AND RACHE L B L ANCHE
 Contents ix
SECTION IV
Making the city resilient: building communities
through artivism 191

14 Mobilizing urban neighbourhoods: artivism, identity,

and cultural sustainability 193
M I L E N A D R A GI ĆE VI Ć Š E Š I Ć, AL E KS ANDAR B RK IĆ ,
A N D J U L I J A M ATE J I Ć

15 Land, people, and art: an attempt to renew social identity

in the Czech Republic 206
M I L O S L AV L A PKA AND E VA CUDL Í NOVÁ

16 Strumica, the city I want to live in! 219

L O R E TA G E O R GI E VS KA- J AKOVL E VA AND MI Š E L PAV LOV SKI

17 Artistic/design practices, art education, and sustainable

development: a question of design or of mutual transition? 231
N E L LY VA N D E R GE E S T

Index 243
COST – European Cooperation
in Science and Technology

This publication is supported by COST.

COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology is an intergovernmen-
tal framework aimed at facilitating the collaboration and networking of scientists and
researchers at the European level. It was established in 1971 by 19 member countries and
currently includes 35 member countries across Europe, and Israel as a cooperating state.
COST funds pan-European, bottom-up networks of scientists and researchers across
all science and technology fields. These networks, called ‘COST Actions’, promote
international coordination of nationally-funded research. By fostering the networking
of researchers at an international level, COST enables breakthrough scientific devel-
opments leading to new concepts and products, thereby contributing to strengthening
Europe’s research and innovation capacities.
COST’s mission focuses in particular on:

• Building capacity by connecting high quality scientific communities throughout Europe

and worldwide;
• Providing networking opportunities for early career investigators;
• Increasing the impact of research on policy makers, regulatory bodies and national
decision makers as well as the private sector.

Through its inclusiveness policy, COST supports the integration of research com-
munities in less research-intensive countries across Europe, leverages national research
investments and addresses societal issues.
Over 45,000 European scientists benefit from their involvement in COST Actions
on a yearly basis. This allows the pooling of national research funding and helps coun-
tries’ research communities achieve common goals.
As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST anticipates and com-
plements the activities of EU Framework Programmes, constituting a “bridge” towards
the scientific communities of emerging countries.
Traditionally, COST draws its budget for networking activities from successive EU
RTD Framework Programmes.

COST is supported by the EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020.

Series introduction

Achieving a more sustainable level of development is the biggest global challenge

of the twenty-first century, and new approaches are urgently needed to ensure
that development is much better aligned with the environmental, societal, and
economic problems we are facing. Scholars and policy makers have recognized
the contribution of culture in sustainable development. The issue of culture in
sustainable development is also being increasingly discussed in debates in various
international, national, and local arenas, and there are ample local actor-driven
initiatives. Yet despite this growing attention, there have been only a very few
attempts to consider culture in a more analytical and explicit way within the
frames of sustainability. The challenge of incorporating culture in sustainable
development discourse, both scientifically and politically, is derived from the
complex, normative, and multidisciplinary character of both culture and sustain-
able development. This difficulty should not, however, be any excuse for ignoring
the cultural dimension within sustainable development.
The series “Routledge Studies in Culture and Sustainable Development” aims
to analyse the diverse and multiple roles that culture plays in sustainable develop-
ment. It takes as one of its starting points the idea that culture in sustainability
serves as a “meta-narrative” which will bring together ideas and standpoints from
an extensive body of academic research currently scattered among different disci-
plines and thematic fields. Moreover, the series responds to the strengthening call
for inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, which is being heard in many quarters,
but in few fields more strongly than that of sustainability and sustainable develop-
ment, with its complex and systemic problems. By combining and confronting the
various approaches – in both the sciences and the humanities and in dealing with
social, cultural, environmental, political, and aesthetic disciplines – the series
offers a comprehensive contribution to the present-day sustainability sciences as
well as related policies.
The books in the series will take a broad approach to culture, giving space to
all the possible understandings of culture from art-based definitions to way-of-life
based approaches, and beyond. Furthermore, culture is not seen only as an addi-
tional aspect of sustainable development – as a “fourth pillar” – but, rather, as a
mediator, a cross-cutting transversal framework, or even as a new set of guiding
principles for sustainable development research, policies, and practices.
xii Series introduction
The essence of culture in, for, and as sustainable development will be explored
through the series in various thematic contexts, representing a wide range of
practices and processes (e.g. everyday life, livelihoods and lifestyles, landscape,
artistic practices, aesthetic experiences, heritage, tourism). These contexts may
concern urban, peri-urban, or rural contexts, and regions with different trajecto-
ries of socioeconomic development. The perspectives of the books will stretch
from local to global and cover different temporal scales from past to present and
future. These issues are valorized by theoretical or empirical analysis; their rela-
tionship to the ecological, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability will
be explored, when appropriate.
The idea for the series is derived from the European COST Action IS1007
“Investigating Cultural Sustainability,” running between 2011 and 2015. This
network is comprised of a group of around one hundred researchers from twenty-
six European countries, and representing many different disciplines. They have
brought together their expertise, knowledge, and experience, and based on that
they have built up new inter- and transdisciplinary understanding and approaches
that can enhance and enrich research into culture in sustainable development,
and support the work of the policy makers and practitioners in this field.
Urbanization is one of the major trends guiding and affecting development
both in cities, as well as in surrounding regions and rural areas. Therefore, finding
sustainable strategies for cities of all sizes is a fundamental challenge globally, but
the focus on small and medium-sized cities allows a better understanding of the
changing relationship between urban and rural realities. There is ample research
on cities and sustainability, but, unlike most of the other contributions, this book
brings culture in sustainable urban development to the core: it investigates, in
particular, how participatory culture and artistic expression contribute to the sus-
tainable future(s) of the cities. By focusing on various strategies, policies, and
bottom-up practices of small and medium-sized cities in Europe, the book offers
a perspective to imagine sustainable future(s) for smaller European cities as well
as others worldwide.
Ultimately, the book seeks to explore different models of local sustainability
that incorporate emotions and attachment to one’s living place and move beyond
profit-driven approaches, which tend to use culture and cultural policies only as a
means for embellishment of the urban environment and propelling economic via-
bility. The book also implicitly reveals path-dependencies of the development of
European cities; each city has its history, which affects its future development. At
the same time, cities are not “trapped” in their pasts, and, as the cases in this book
show, the human agency, imagination, and cooperative efforts of residents can
alter local development trajectories. Therefore, as the editors of the book wisely
note, there are no copy-paste strategies. Rather, each city should find its own path
to sustainability through innovative re-imagination of its own cultural assets and
traditions and through creatively applying the lessons learned elsewhere.
Katriina Soini and Joost Dessein
Figures and tables

Figures
1.1 Comparison of selected cultural activities across countries
and city size 26
7.1 Map showing the clusters of municipalities supported by
the programme Metropòli 104
7.2 Localization of cultural facilities and services in the seven
cities of the Northern Milanese region 106
14.1 The exterior/interior of the abandoned military barracks
Dr. Archibald Reiss, in Novi Sad, Serbia 196
14.2 The activist occupation of the abandoned military barracks
Dr. Archibald Reiss, in Novi Sad, Serbia 197
14.3 The joint military and police action of evicting the
activists from the abandoned military barracks
Dr. Archibald Reiss, in Novi Sad, Serbia 197
15.1 Map showing Vodňany and Königsmühle among other
key places 210
15.2 Vodňany-Zátiší. A. The ground is cleaned and ready for visitor
access (work of volunteers). B. The installation Fuller’s Cupola
(named after the artist). C. The installation View Point for Two.
D. View of the Zátiší hill through Fuller’s Cupola 213
15.3 Königsmühle. A. Königsmühle today. B. Königsmühle during
symbolic reconstruction – the pub. C. The decorated pub.
D. Königsmühle during symbolic reconstruction – the village 215

Tables
1.1 Thematic domains covered by the Urban Audit 23
1.2 Small and medium-sized cities in the Quality of Life
Perception Survey by country 24
1.3 Comparison of cultural activities across countries and
city-size (full data) 28
5.1 Chronology of key European policies, statements, and
programmes 70
xiv Figures and tables
5.2 Cultural indicators within the Reference Framework
for European Sustainable Cities (February 2014) 78
6.1 Cultural development approaches 95
7.1 Demographic dimension and roles of the seven cities of
the “Nord Milano” partnership at the end of the 2010s 105
10.1 Access to cultural activities and feedback about
cultural services (Internet survey) 144
10.2 Attitudes on power in cultural and sport services
(Internet survey) 146
10.3 An overview of the first cycle of the KUULTO action
research process and its main findings 149
Notes on contributors

Editorial board – The shaping and development of this book benefitted from
thoughtful advice received from an editorial board consisting of Prof. Mariusz
Czepczyński (University of Gdansk, Poland), Prof. Anita Kangas (University
of Jyväskylä, Finland), Prof. Miloslav Lapka (University of South Bohemia and
Charles University, Czech Republic), and Dr. Rolf Hugoson (Umeå University,
Sweden).

Helmut K. Anheier, PhD, is President and Dean, and Professor of Sociology

at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany. He also holds a chair
in sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of its
Center for Social Investment. He is currently researching the role of founda-
tions in civil society. Helmut Anheier is author of over three hundred publica-
tions, and he has won various international prizes for his scholarship. His most
recent publication is the second edition of his textbook, Nonprofit Organiza-
tions: Theory, Management, Policy (Routledge, 2005 and 2014).

Rachel Blanche is Lecturer in Cultural Management at Queen Margaret Uni-

versity, Edinburgh, Scotland. She specializes in cultural policy, having con-
tributed directly to cultural policy formation in Scotland through consultancy
work with the Scottish government, the Scottish Arts Council, Creative
Scotland, and many organizations across the arts and cultural sectors. Rachel
remains active in the field of national and international cultural policy forma-
tion and currently serves as a member of the United Kingdom National Com-
mission to UNESCO – Scotland Committee.

Aleksandar Brkić, PhD, is a scholar in the fields of arts management and cul-
tural policy. He is a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore,
as well as a guest lecturer at the University of Arts in Belgrade and Faculty
of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, Serbia. In 2011, he was the recipient of
the Cultural Policy Research Award, and his book Cultural Policy Frameworks
(Re)constructing National and Supranational Identities: The Balkans and the Euro-
pean Union was published in 2013 by the European Cultural Foundation. He
works as a creative producer in the intersections of performing arts, visual arts,
and design.
xvi Notes on contributors
Eva Cudlínová is Associate Professor at the University of South Bohemia, Fac-
ulty of Economics, České Budějovice, in the Czech Republic. She is a lecturer
on ecological and environmental economics. She was educated at the Uni-
versity of Economics in Prague, and previously employed at the Institute of
Systems Biology and Ecology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Among her main
fields of interest are problems of sustainable development, resource manage-
ment, economic methods of valuing nature, and global environmental prob-
lems from an economic perspective. She is author or coauthor of about sixty
articles in scientific journals and dozens of book chapters.
Milena Dragićević Šešić, PhD, is Head of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy
and Management (Interculturalism and Mediation in the Balkans) and former
President of the University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia. She is a board member
of the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management (Brussels) and the
Cultural Policy Research Award (European Cultural Foundation, Amster-
dam), and UNESCO expert for a Technical Assistance Mission (Cambodia).
She holds Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques (France) and
is a Member of the National Council for Science (2006–2010). She is a guest
lecturer at numerous universities and has published fifteen books – including
Art Management in Turbulent Times: Adaptable Quality Management; Culture:
Management, Animation, Marketing; Intercultural Mediation in the Balkans; Neo-
folk Culture; Art and Alternative; Urban Spectacle; and Horizons of Reading – and
numerous essays. Her work has been translated into sixteen languages.
Nancy Duxbury, PhD, is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies,
University of Coimbra, Portugal, and Co-coordinator of its Cities, Cultures
and Architecture Research Group. Her current research examines culture in
local sustainability planning, cultural mapping methodologies, and commu-
nity engagement through environmental-artistic projects. She is a member
of the European Expert Network on Culture and an adjunct professor at the
School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is published
internationally and is editor of Animation of Public Space through the Arts:
Toward More Sustainable Communities (2013) and coeditor of Cultural Mapping
as Cultural Inquiry (2015). She cofounded and was Director of Research of the
Creative City Network of Canada.
Nelly van der Geest, PhD, is a sociologist, theatre maker, and expert in organi-
zational change. At the University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU), Netherlands,
she leads the knowledge programme “Art Education in Context” at the Cen-
ter of Expertise on Education. She publishes on creative partnerships, creative
ability as purpose in learning, and the role of artists and designers in partici-
patory and sustainable projects. She lectures in HKU’s master’s programme,
Art Education, on innovation of education due to societal dynamics such as
sustainability or migration. In the Dutch national programme, Leadership in
Culture (LinC), she leads the “interventure” track, in which upcoming leaders
in culture research the adventure of innovation.
 Notes on contributors xvii
Loreta Georgievska-Jakovleva, PhD, is Full Professor of Cultural Studies at the
Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Culture/Култура, and coeditor of the
book Creative Economies: New Knowledge for New Initiatives (2014). During
the last five years, she has published three books: Literature and Cultural Tran-
sition (2008); Identities (2012); and Culture and Media (2014). Her research
interests include the areas of identity, cultural memory, cultural policy, and
cultural industries.
Michael Hoelscher, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Sociology, Uni-
versity of Heidelberg, Germany. He holds a PhD from the Free University Ber-
lin, and a Habilitation from the University of Heidelberg. From 2006 to 2008,
he worked at the University of Oxford, where he still is Associate Research
Fellow at the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance
(SKOPE). His main fields of interest are globalization; European integration;
cultural, economic, and urban sociology; and higher education. Currently, he
is working on a comparative project on “New Inequalities in Creative Cities.”
His publications include Cities, Cultural Policy and Governance (as guest editor
with Helmut K. Anheier and Raj Isar) and “Innovation and Creativity” (in
the Encyclopedia of Global Studies, edited by H. K. Anheier and M. Juergens-
meyer, 2012).
Svetlana Hristova, PhD, is an urban sociologist, researcher, and lecturer; Associ-
ate Professor at the South-West University, Bulgaria; and the initiator and
Chair of the Thematic Area “Urban Management and Cultural Policies of
the City” within the European Network of Cultural Administration Training
Centers (ENCATC). Her research interests lie in the crossroads of sociology
of culture, urban studies, and visual anthropology, as exemplified in numerous
projects and publications in English, French, German, Polish, Finnish, and
Lithuanian, besides her native Bulgarian. She is author of the books Border
Identity of the Small Town (2001) and City: Images, Symbols, Identities (2002),
and is coeditor of Public Places of European Cities (2008) and Public Space:
Between Re-imagination and Occupation (2015).
Rolf Hugoson, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Umeå Univer-
sity, Sweden. He is also a researcher on urban history at the multidisciplinary
research centre for regional science, CERUM. He is participating in the
research platform “Culture and Cities,” focusing on European Capitals of Cul-
ture. Hugoson has published two books and a number of articles and chapters
on cultural policy, political and rhetoric theory, and diplomatic history. A
book in Swedish on the 1950–2010 history of the 2014 European Capital of
Culture Umeå is forthcoming in 2015.
Jenny Johannisson, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Centre for Cultural Policy
Research, Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of
Borås, Sweden. Her main research interests are local and regional cultural
policies understood against the backdrop of globalization processes, and she
xviii Notes on contributors
has published extensively on these issues. Johannisson chairs the scientific
committee of the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research
(ICCPR), a biennial research conference which is organized in association
with the International Journal of Cultural Policy (Routledge), and she was coedi-
tor (2009–2012) of the open access scholarly journal Culture Unbound: Journal
on Current Cultural Research.
Anita Kangas, Professor, PhD, is the Director of the Unit of Cultural Policy/
Politics at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her publications and research
interests include theory and history of cultural policy, models of local cultural
policy, cultural participation, cultural sustainability, and action research meth-
odology. She is a member of the European Expert Network on Culture and the
ENCATC Cultural Policy and Cultural Management Research Award interna-
tional jury, and she has conducted many research projects (for example, Local
Government Culture and Sport Services – Access and Democracy; Cultural
Sustainability in Rural Areas; History of Cultural Policy; and Construction and
Reconstruction in Authorship in the Arts).
Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and
creativity in urban change. He invented the concept of the creative city in
the late 1980s, which became a global movement and changed the way cities
thought about their capabilities and resources. He has written several books,
including The Fragile City & the Risk Nexus, with Tom Burke; The Sensory
Landscape of Cities; and The Origins and Futures of the Creative City and Cul-
ture & Commerce. He is best known for The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban
Innovators (2000); The Art of City Making (2006); and The Intercultural City:
Planning for Diversity Advantage, with Phil Wood.
Miloslav Lapka, PhD, has held several leading positions in the Academy of Sci-
ences of the Czech Republic. Now he is working in the Faculty of Econom-
ics, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic; and
the Faculty of Art, Charles University, Prague. His research interests concern
landscape ecology, rural sociology, problems of the human dimension in land-
scape and global environmental changes, and problems of interdisciplinar-
ity and relationships between sciences and social sciences. Miloslav Lapka is
author or coauthor of more than one hundred scientific papers presented in
national and international journals as well as chapters and seven books.
François Matarasso is a UK-based freelance writer and researcher with a thirty-
five-year career in community arts. He has worked in many European coun-
tries, and his work is widely published and translated. His books include The
English Castle (1993), Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the
Arts (1997), Only Connect, Arts Touring and Rural Communities (2004), Where
We Dream (2012), Winter Fires, Art and Agency in Old Age (2012), and Bread
and Salt: Stories of Art and Migration (2013). For more information see: http://
parliamentofdreams.com
 Notes on contributors xix
Julija Matejić, MA, is a researcher and the Coordinator at the UNESCO Chair in
Cultural Policy and Management (Interculturalism and Mediation in the Bal-
kans), University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. Following her career as a pianist,
she has developed into a professional in the field of arts management. Currently,
she is a PhD candidate in the Department of Theory of Arts and Media, Univer-
sity of Arts, on the topic Theory of Performing Practices in Music (Performativity of
Pianism). Her research interests also include art in public space, post-memory, and
the concept of sustainable development in the field of culture.
Aldo Milohnić, PhD, is Assistant Professor of the History of Theatre at the Uni-
versity of Ljubljana’s Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, in
Slovenia. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Politike book series, editor or coeditor
of numerous anthologies of texts and special issues of cultural journals, and
author of the book Theories of Contemporary Theatre and Performance (2009).
Over the last twenty years, he has been involved in many research projects
dealing with the history and theory of performing arts, sociology of culture,
and cultural policy issues.

Mišel Pavlovski, PhD, is Full Professor of Cultural Studies at the Saints Cyril and
Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. His research interests
include cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies, and theatre stud-
ies. He is the Head Researcher of “The Macedonian Literature Data Base”
and was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Spektar (2010–2012). He
has published the following monographs: From an Original Idea to the Creation
of a State (coauthored with Jovan Pavlovski, 1993); Macedonia: Yesterday and
Today (coauthored with Jovan Pavlovski, 1996); Pure Play: Biomechanics in
the Theatre System of V. E. Meyerhold (1998); Theatre and Myth (2005); and
Creative Economies: New Knowledge for New Initiatives (coedited with Loreta
Georgievska-Jakovleva, 2014).

Katarzyna Plebańczyk, PhD (management in the humanistic sciences), works

as an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Culture at Jagiellonian Univer-
sity, Cracow, Poland. She is the author of several development strategies for
cultural institutions that actively promote the idea of mutual understanding
between the sender and the recipient of cultural activities. Her research inter-
ests encompass a broad spectrum of cultural management topics, including
cultural economics and cultural management (e.g. sustainability of cultural
organizations, audience development, cultural and food tourism), knowledge
management (e.g. the role of cultural observatories), and the strategic man-
agement of culture.
Davide Ponzini, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Politecnico di
Milano, Italy. His research focuses on planning theory and urban and cultural
policy, and he has extensively published in international journals and books. He
is coauthor (with Pier Carlo Palermo) of the books Spatial Planning and Urban
Development (Springer, 2010) and Place-Making and Urban Development: New
xx Notes on contributors
Challenges for Planning and Design (Routledge, 2015); and coauthor (with the
photographer Michele Nastasi) of the book Starchitecture: Scenes, Actors and
Spectacles in Contemporary Cities (Allemandi, 2011).
Sakarias Sokka, PhD, has been researching and teaching in the Unit of Cul-
tural Policy/Politics at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, since 2004. His
research interests belong to the field of historical sociology, and his scien-
tific publications, both in Finland and internationally, consider the historical
development of Finnish cultural policy and the justification and implementa-
tion of public cultural policies.
David Stevenson is Programme Leader for the MA Arts, Festival and Cul-
tural Management at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, Scotland. His
research is primarily qualitative, and he is particularly interested in interpre-
tative methodologies as approaches that have the potential to give a greater
insight into the inherently complex and pluralist landscape in which policy is
destined to function.
Elisabete Caldeira Neto Tomaz is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Centre
for Research and Studies in Sociology, University Institute of Lisbon (CIES-
IUL), Portugal. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication design and a
master’s degree in communication sciences. Tomaz has participated in many
international conferences and has submitted several articles for publication in
scholarly journals. She has collaborated with INTELI, a think tank in Lisbon,
in several European and national projects and networks related with develop-
ment policies and cultural/creative policies. She is a member of the COST
Action “Investigating Cultural Sustainability.”
Introduction
Svetlana Hristova, Milena Dragićević Šešić,
and Nancy Duxbury

If our time is labelled the “urban age,” it is not simply because more than half of
the world’s population lives in cities but, more importantly, because “our world
order comes to be built on cities and their economies rather than nations and
their armies” (Khanna 2010). In the global constellation of cities, scale, position-
ing, vision, and ambition matter. Responding to critical aggravations in econ-
omy, ecology, and equity, cities today are acting as autonomous players seeking
original solutions to local, national, supranational, and global problems. How-
ever, European small cities are facing diverse challenges besides global economic
pressures and environmental threats, suffering from structural disproportions due
to the demographic crises of quickly aging populations and workforces fleeing to
the more promising job markets of metropolises (EEA 2009). During the recent
economic crisis, European small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) have been chal-
lenged to demonstrate their strengths and capacities. It is precisely at this junc-
tion that they have displayed new levels of creative civic imagination in their
search for specific innovative solutions within the competition for resources on
both European and global stages and to find locally resonant sustainable develop-
ment solutions.
This book was developed to energize and deepen the discussion about how
SMCs are creatively addressing with the means of culture the challenges and
risks of the contemporary neoliberal world (Lorentzen and van Heur 2012; Bell
and Jayne 2006). Although SMCs represent over 60 percent of European urban
settlements and give shelter to the majority of the European urban population,
they receive disproportionally less attention in scientific analyses, which tra-
ditionally focus on global cities and metropolises. This volume addresses both
a deficit of attention to the role of small and medium-sized cities in European
sustainable development and an underestimation of the role of culture, artistic
expression, and creativity for integrated development as a prerequisite for urban
sustainability.
Characterized by interdisciplinary richness and geographical diversity, the
book presents a broad collection of case studies and good practices from through-
out Europe that illustrate how culture contributes to more sustainable models of
city making focused on quality of life, local identities, and creating places where
people like to live. The selected variety of regionally specific cultural approaches
2 Svetlana Hristova et al.
underline also how local cultural sectors have to be sustainable themselves, in
order to operate as engines of integral city development. All these research issues
are aspects of the overarching question: what are the roles of culture in sustaining
small and medium-sized cities?
On the other hand, although culture is based on traditions, providing conti-
nuity “precipitated” into both material and immaterial heritage, still it is not a
book about heritage. When the cases in this volume address issues of heritage,
it is from the perspective of its contemporary use, reuse, and/or adaptation as a
“natural” part of the cultural assets of communities and their places (Fairclough
et al. 2015). The book also investigates how participatory culture, community
arts, and, more generally, the creativity of civic imagination can contribute to the
goal of sustainable futures for SMCs. Ultimately, the book is about European citi-
zens, making their lives through sustaining their cities. In a broader perspective,
the cases reveal the intricate and fragile relationships between cultural strategies,
economic policies, sustainable development goals, and the national and regional
contexts in which cities are embedded. As both Matarasso and Tomaz (in this
volume) keenly observe, policy discourses often advocate an economic rationale
for cultural strategies, while a community development focus depends largely on
actors’ power relations and their operating/national frameworks.
From a theoretical point of view, the book represents a conceptual node fusing
three dimensions – insights from urban studies concerning small and medium-
sized cities, the pressing agenda of sustainability, and cultural policy solutions
and recommendations. Within this thematic intersection, the book addresses key
issues such as:

• how to move beyond the dominating understanding of sustainability as

an ecology-economy-equity balance to a more holistic sociocultural and
human-needs-led development conception;
• how to address the contradiction between the profit-driven economic pro-
cesses of regeneration, gentrification, and commercialization of cities and
the emergence of more participatory bottom-up urban cultural movements
(i.e. the right to the city);
• how to reconcile the potential contradiction between organizational fields of
culture, sustainability, and innovation, which sometimes develops into open
tension; and
• how to understand the various ways cities have been “Europeanized” in dif-
ferent national contexts, from simple copy-paste practices to the creative
adaptation of European methodologies and innovative applied approaches.

Key concepts and cross-linking themes

The idea of Europolis

Despite the widely spread opinion that many European SMCs have become
no more than suburban commuter satellites to the large cities and conurbation
 Introduction 3
urban regions, the examples in this book reveal another reality: places sensitive
to their environments, which contribute to a high quality of life, aim to be “safe
and inclusive, well planned, built and run,” and offer “equality of opportunity and
good services for all” (EU 2007). Europolis is conceptualized as the emergence of a
European model – or models, since it incorporates a variety of local approaches –
for urban sustainability involving processes of reimaging and cocreating new city
futures explicitly using culture. The term Europolis is also used to emphasize that
these emerging models may possibly be European-specific approaches to sustain-
able urban development, in contrast to the development of metropolises and
large urban agglomerations as a worldwide practice. Europolis is not a utopian
concept, but it suggests a need to discern the counterbalancing processes enabled
by new urban policies to meet economic, social, and ecological challenges, with
sensitivity to the agency of participative culture.

Sustainable urban development – the sustainable city

In this book, the concept of sustainable city crystallizes as a consolidation of
different coextensive lines in existing interpretations of urban sustainability.
Understood as an issue of new urban culture with social, economic, institu-
tional, technological, and ecological aspects, the book critically analyses the
concept of sustainable cities from a sociocultural point of view, pleading for an
integral holistic approach. This multidimensionality of urban sustainability
bears implicit controversies. One of these is set around the concepts of sustain-
ability and the sustainable development of cities. The concept of sustainable city
incorporates the idea of smart space organization, taking account of land use,
sanitation, and efficient transport – a kind of technologically perfect, car-free,
carbon-neutral, no waste, solar-powered paradise, “full of architectural marvels
to house new Guggenheim and Louvre collections in stunning new buildings
by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel” (Khanna 2010). Cities of this type, newly
designed in the non-Western world, may pretend to be sustainable, but they
remain artificial assemblages, isolated from the calamities of reality and missing
the true social glue: “For these emerging global hubs, modernization does not
equal Westernization. . . . Western values like freedom of speech and religion
are not part of the bargain” (Khanna 2010). This is certainly not the European
model of continuous sustainable growth that aims to attentively manage local
natural resources and to provide opportunities for inhabitants to develop their
own abilities and collective local potentialities.
In exploring sustainable cities from a cultural point of view, the book sug-
gests at least three interconnected and largely complementary possibilities for
consideration: culture-based sustainably developing places, livable places, and
ecologically sensitive culturized places (cf. Young 2008). The concept of culture-
based sustainably developing places serves to introduce the necessity for creatively
inclusive neighbourhoods or other types of territorial units with a potential for
an evolving sense of place, which create their own developmental logic within the
city itself but often go beyond city “walls” by expanding their regional, national,
4 Svetlana Hristova et al.
and international networks, thus offering more opportunities and cultural ser-
vices for both citizens and visitors (Kangas and Sokka; Matarasso; Johannisson;
Plebańzcyk; van der Geest). Livable places emphasize as their primary “task” ensur-
ing a high quality of life “no longer defined by high material consumption . . .
[but] when people can live a healthy, pleasant and safe life” (EEA 2009, 43).
In other words, they can enjoy life on two interlinked levels: the satisfaction of
everyday life needs and the fulfillment of life-long goals, which collectively create
their sense of meaning (Georgievska-Jakovleva and Pavlovski; Dragićević Šešić,
Brkić, and Matejić). Ecologically sensitive culturized places put greater emphasis on
the revitalization of social fabrics in place-based contexts through renewed rela-
tionships with the local natural environment and new commitments to places of
cohabitation as reimagined aesthetized places of restored cultural traditions and
collective memory (Lapka and Cudlínová; Milohnić).

Civic culture and civic urbanity

While urban regeneration research typically focuses on economic dimensions
and impacts, the book offers three important layers of debate that are investigat-
ing the potential creativity of community in contexts of participatory openness:

• Civic imagination, fostered through participatory creative processes, is a nec-

essary prerequisite for the creation of diversified models of sustainable SMCs,
which are tightly linked to promoting a specific local identity on global com-
petitive stages, where metropolitan cities are dominating with institutional-
ized and financially supported “imagination” through numerous cultural and
entertainment organizations. When a city or its civil society offers ongoing,
context-specific platforms for expression, civic imagination can be an inex-
haustible source of continuous innovation and experimentation, contribut-
ing to the further valorization of SMCs on a global scale.
• Civic urbanity refers to processes of creating connection and purpose (Landry)
through being a full citizen, meaningfully engaged with his/her city. Culture
is an important part of civic engagement as the authors of this book argue:
culture is a public good, and a city’s public space with its various cultural
functions is a crucial element of sustainable city making. Thus, cultural ini-
tiatives are regarded as an essential part of civic urbanity, especially taking
into account their social relevancy, capacity to contribute to social inclu-
sion, and ability to regenerate a sense of civic pride.
• Civic–public partnerships involve civic actors and movements in dialogue with
local governments. Through these partnerships, public values of culture are
rearticulated and reemphasized. Partnering with civil society in reconceptu-
alizing and creating broader cultural offers is the most important approach
for cities wishing to innovate the scope of activities and assure the well-
being of their citizens. Cooperation with different partners from civil society
(artists, activists, NGOs, experts, and concerned citizens) allows for more
prosperous, just, and inclusive societies, creating a city that is more vibrant
 Introduction 5
and confident in its own developmental capacity. Through partnerships,
both sides are empowered and strengthened, so that civil society does not
hesitate to offer its help to local government, and local government becomes
closer to its citizens and their needs.

Public sphere: culture in the public interest as a public good

As contemporary society has shifted towards neoliberal market regulation,
many people have suffered the throes of, first, the industrial/postindustrial cri-
ses and, then, the financial/banking crisis. Some authors claim that what we
observe today is a cyclic structural crisis of a profit-driven neoliberal economy.
As noted in the Brundtland Report, “economic development is unsustainable if
it increases vulnerability to crises” (WCED 1987, 38). Although a new socio-
cultural paradigm is not yet fully formed, public actions are now set within a
generalized but strong disbelief in neoliberal solutions, and this situation has
led people to go back to something more “stable,” generally characterized by
solidarity, mutual support, and redistribution of profits and losses. This process
of new urban activism, urbactivism (Hristova), has been embraced by bottom-up
artivism (Dragićević Šešić, Brkić, and Matejić); energized by civic imagination
(e.g. Aalborg Charter of European Cities and Towns Towards Sustainability [Aalborg
Charter 1994]; European Sustainable Cities Platform 2013); and reinforced by
top-down European policies through a series of public documents (e.g., Leipzig
Charter on Sustainable European Cities [EU 2007]), supported by considerable
financial funding (Duxbury). In this context, culture once again is being con-
sidered a public good and an activity in the public interest, with a strong focus
on the local space where it is “born” and lives. However, this is not a one-way
street: as Landry underlines, civic urbanity develops in the “risk landscape” of
cities facing a visible decline in engagement.
As the public sphere has diminished, new movements of urban sustainability
have tended to focus on the enhancement and growth of the (sometimes limited)
remaining public realm. We observe a return of the importance of the public
sphere expressed spatially (public space), virtually (public communication, social
media), and with close attention to democracy and public dialogue, enhanced
with the means of arts and cultural expression as a public good and cultural right.
Cities – local authorities and citizens together – are co-responsible for recreating
the public sphere, taking into account its need to develop and support platforms
for sociability and debates; public spaces for people to meet and gather; and pub-
lic media or institutions as spaces for social dialogue. As the public and private
spheres become more tightly interlinked, both public and private entities are
increasingly expected to play roles in enabling, through partnerships and other
arrangements, the openness of the public sphere.
In the global context of cultural policies praising the creative economy and
emphasizing its financial contributions to urban development (Vilenica and
Kuda.org 2012), this book presents a plurality of approaches and celebrates per-
spectives where culture is offering different sets of values based on the idea of
6 Svetlana Hristova et al.
the public good (necessary for creating conducive conditions for urban sustain-
ability). Contemporary creativity and participatory practices contribute to social
inclusion, urban vibrancy and renewal, and the incremental development of
meaningful places. In contemporary times when business ideas about efficiency
have been transferred into all domains of cultural and civic life, the practices,
approaches, and perspectives highlighted in this book illustrate pathways to rene-
gotiating the different values between sectors, accepting the importance of the
noncommercial logic of the shared commons (Landry). In this negotiation of
values, the importance of culture maintaining its own autonomy is recognized as
contributing to public interests (Breznik 2004).

Participatory culture and arts, creative inclusion, and empowerment

Participatory projects are usually self-organized actions that sustain human rela-
tions and bonds of trust within a community – they are examples of civic urbanity
in action, and they can lead to shared policies (Dragićević Šešić 2006). Acting
collectively, these projects not only contribute to the sustainability of a place
but also raise civic pride and create collective cultural memories (Assmann and
Czaplicka 1995) that are indispensable for sustaining livable places. Thus, this
book is about people making cities sustainable through participatory cultural civic
activities. It is also about artistic contributions that inspire and lead many of these
actions. As SMCs are usually not highly multicultural (i.e. much less than metro-
politan cities), this issue was not often highlighted, but it was not avoided. This
is also a book about specificities that shows why SMCs need different approaches
and focused investigation, as many of the dominating themes in urban sociology
and anthropology do not resonate with SMCs.

Dynamics and tensions

Contemporary cities are battlegrounds of controversial interactions and trans-
versal tensions based on different development values and models, which Charles
Landry (in this volume) calls fault lines: “so deep-seated, intractable and con-
tentious that they shape our entire worldview, such as the conflict between
environmental ethics and economic rationality in running countries or cities.”
This can take the shape of a conflict – for example, between the economic-
based gentrification of a city versus the bottom-up “right to the city” move-
ments aiming at community-focused sustainability processes. In many cases,
high-level investment policies mean unsustainability for the indigenous inhab-
itants who cannot afford to continue to live in the upgraded locations. This
leads to the disappearance of collective memories and sense of place, and, in
the long term, to a new identity for the new inhabitants. The emergence of
more participatory processes is the key way to reconcile these different tensions
and conflicting interests. Public policies reconceived as developmental strate-
gies of the community offer platforms where cultural economics and citizens’
interests might go together.
 Introduction 7
The book structure
Section I – “Culture and sustainable development of European cities: what are
the issues?” – is devoted to the main conceptual intricacies of the book. It offers
general outlines for understanding the new role of culture in building more sus-
tainable cities in Europe and the special role of small and medium-sized cities
in the process of establishing new models of urban sustainability (Anheier and
Hoelscher; Landry; Hristova; Milohnić) where culture is both promoter and
pattern maker for new values and the engine of new urbactivism (Hristova). As
mentioned previously, European SMCs have demonstrated strengths and capaci-
ties (although limited) in the face of the recent economic recession and have
displayed a new level of creative civic imagination as they seek specific innova-
tive solutions within the competition for resources on both European and global
stages.
When it comes to urban creativity, it is worthwhile to notice the visions of
one of the “fathers” of the creative city concept, Charles Landry, now reflecting
on sustainable city making based on the normative idea of civic urbanity framed
by the interlinked concepts of a holistic approach, the shared commons, eco-
consciousness, healthy urban planning, cultural literacy, inclusivity, intergenera-
tional equity, the aesthetic imperative, creative city making, and an invigorated
democracy. Creativity – broadly understood as thinking, planning, and acting
with imagination – when applied to (creative) city making, goes beyond the
“urban engineering paradigm” and incorporates all aspects of the city: the hard-
ware, the software (i.e. a creative mindset), and the “orgware” (Landry). All this
gives rise to so-called hands-on urbanism (Milohnić).
In this respect, the four chapters in this section are unanimous: although cre-
ative city approaches view culture as an input, throughput, and output factor of
urban economies – as part of value chains that include investments and devel-
opment as well as production, services, distribution, and consumption – culture
cannot be viewed only as an instrumental means to sustainability (Anheier and
Hoelscher). As Aldo Milohnić put it, culture is not only the number of tickets
sold; in essence, culture’s impact resides in its ability to (re)produce and/or to
challenge the norm as well as its ability to contribute to the well-being of national
and local communities. The two case studies of urban gardening in Slovenia aptly
reveal the intrinsic art of growing the city as “sharing the management of a space
and various participatory processes” in which not only plants are cultivated, but
also (or even more importantly) social relations.
This is also the point of departure to understanding the authentic spirit of
Europolis, which from the very beginning – with its socio-spatial and cultural
arrangements and with its tradition of openness and democracy – is essentially
European (Hristova; Landry). In today’s fluid world, urban society often suffers
from a lack of commitment to the city and changing meanings of citizenship.
Still, “citizens at their best are makers, shapers, and cocreators of their evolv-
ing city,” and, as Landry notes, ultimately, with its universal claims, Europolis is
Cosmopolis.
8 Svetlana Hristova et al.
The authors in this section advocate for a holistic, integral understanding of
urban sustainability, a field that earnestly requires better knowledge about how
cultural strategies work in this context, so that cities do not waste resources in
unsustainable projects. In this conceptual and operational setting, cultural pol-
icy has to incorporate sustainability as a key aim in its strategies (Anheier and
Hoelscher).
Section II – “Europolis as a project: envisioning more sustainable cities” –
illuminates how the integration of culture within sustainable urban development
is influenced and mobilized by European policy frameworks and programmes,
propelled through intercity relations, and entangled within local regenera-
tion dynamics. The EU policy agenda and funds have spurred on a process of
“Europeanization” characterized by policy transferability across political systems,
transnational networking, and local-level adaptations. Cities are increasingly
encouraged to think holistically and to take an “integrated approach to sustain-
able urban development,” although operational guidance on this process of inte-
gration is only now emerging (Duxbury). While the place of culture in integrated
and sustainable urban development is being worked out in policy and planning
frameworks, within diverse national contexts culture has become embedded in
local city imaginaries, urban policies, and the strategic development of many
small and medium-sized cities (Tomaz).
Many local authorities looking to renew urban economies and to address
social and environmental problems have assumed a proactive, entrepreneurial
approach. Cities are increasingly acting as autonomous agents, taking on their
own foreign policies and roles through various acts of urban diplomacy and
cooperation. Although intercity competition is very high, they are reaching
out, regionally and internationally, to learn from and collaborate with other cit-
ies, providing heightened visibility, recognition, and other “home advantages.”
In this context, the European Capitals of Culture programme forms a powerful
frame and opportunity for investment, recognition, and promotion of a city and
a “launching pad” for local action and change in cities of all sizes, with growing
attention to SMCs (Hugoson). Among adjacent cities, we also observe a new
stage of urban cooperation to be recognized globally, but one that is dependent on
continued economic vitality to fuel, with diminished dynamism and momentum
in the context of the crisis (Ponzini).
In the emerging Culture 3.0 context (Sacco 2011), many countries and cit-
ies are about to enter a new phase of culture prosumption, when potentially
everybody becomes a cultural producer and gains access to new interactive tech-
nologies. While not all cities try to enhance their roles as cultural centres, if
such engagement occurs, as Hugoson argues, we should expect it to be directed
outwards, towards wider flows. This imperative to continually balance local and
global dynamics within changing cultural, urban, and political flows is particu-
larly pronounced for SMCs that have suffered processes of deindustrialization and
need to reimagine their sustainable futures.
The cases presented in this section show that fully integrating culture in
urban sustainable development remains challenging. While some SMCs have
Another random document with
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 CHAPTER IX
"THE GLORY OF THE STARS"
That evening, Jack, the astronomical weather-prophet (as he
laughingly called himself) took advantage of the magnificence of the
stars, undimmed by the moon, which was still below the horizon, to
bring out his big telescope.
Eight bells had gone and the starboard watch were below until
midnight. The greater number of them, preferring the fresh night air
to that of the stuffy foc's'le, had brought their blankets up on to the
foc's'le head. Here they lay about in attitudes peculiar to sailors, and
in which only sailors could sleep.
Only one man lay at full length, flat on his back, his pipe between his
lips, as he puffed steadily, a vacant look in his open eyes as he
rested his brain as well as his body. This was Red Bill. Near him lay
the cockney, curled up like a dog and snoring tunefully, his pipe on
the deck by his cheek, where it had fallen from his mouth. A sailor
always lights his pipe to go to sleep with, and generally falls asleep
smoking. A habit which is supposed to be very dangerous to
landlubbers, but which, so far as I have heard, never caused an
accident at sea.
Paddy sat jammed between two bollards, his chin sunk upon his
chest, in a position which looked the reverse of comfortable, and yet
he was sleeping peacefully.
Up in the bows reclined Jack, with the cowboy and Curly. These last
two were taking turns to peer through the telescope, whilst Jack
discoursed upon the wonders of the heavens.
"Now, just you look at that fellow there, Broncho," said the rover,
pointing along the cowboy's line of sight. "That's the planet Saturn."
"You don't say!"
"Yes, have you got him? Now, do you see his rings?"
"Which I do for shore. Whatever be them rings, Jack, an' why does
this here Saturn trail round with 'em. I notes he's the on'y star with
them appendages."
"They're supposed to be rings of gas or vapour. It's been said that
our world once had rings like that, and that they burst and all fell
upon the earth at once, which produced the flood."
"Say, but that's kinder strange. However scientific sports onravels
them mysteries an' rounds up them facts shore has me bogged.
Mebbe Providence devastates this here Saturn with floods right now.
If them rings is rain-clouds they're bulky a whole lot, an' liable to
swamp this Saturn planet if they plays a steady game; an' if I were
an inhabitant thar I'd be hittin' quite a gait for the high spots, or
pawin' in my war-bags for the price of a birch-bark."
"Of course, you know the signs of the zodiac, Curly," went on the
amateur astronomer.
"No, not all. Spout 'em out, Jack, and show 'em to us."
"Why, don't you remember the rhyme:
The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,
And next the Crab, the Lion shines;
The Virgin and the Scales,
The Scorpion, Archer, and He-Goat,
The Man that holds the water-pot,
And Fish with glittering tails."
"Whar's the Bull you mentions?" exclaimed the cowpuncher eagerly.
"I jest itches to throw a rope over him."
"Well, do you see that V with a big red star?"
"Red star—why, shore, I savvys that V since I were a kiddy."
"That's the head of the Bull, and that rose-red star is Aldebaran, the
eye of the Bull. That's a star you'll find useful some day, Curly, when
you're captain of a ship and want to take night sights."
"Why ever do they call him 'Aldebaran'?" asked Broncho.
"It's Arabic, meaning 'the follower,' because it follows the Pleiades."
"I know the Pleiades," said Curly, pointing aloft proudly.
"Many a night I saw the Pleiads,
Rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies
Tangled in a silver braid,"
quoted Jack.
"The Pleiades," he went on, "were the seven daughters of Atlas, and
are in some mysterious way connected with the flood. The ancient
Egyptians celebrated a festival in November at the culmination of the
Pleiades, which they directly connected with the flood.
"The same thing seems to have occurred amongst the Hindoos, the
Persians, the Druids, and in the South Seas. The Japanese Feast of
Lanterns is also supposed to commemorate this event, whilst the
ancient inhabitants of Mexico had a tradition that the world had been
destroyed at the midnight culmination of the Pleiades. This is all
mysteriously borne out by the fact that Taurus, the Bull, whom you
have just looked at, shows only his head and shoulders; he is
supposed to be swimming."
"That's shore interesting as an idee," commented Broncho. "But do
you-alls regyard this here flood superstition you recounts as a likely
play?"
"It's only a theory, Broncho, with maybe nothing in it."
"Theeries is theeries, an' facts is facts. I meets a gent once way
down to Tombstone, who allows he's the bigges' full-blooded wolf in
Arizona. He's shore a tough citizen a whole lot, carries a six-gun with
the stock full o' notches an' the trigger tied back. Wall, this here
Tombstone sport, which his name is P'ison Dick (an' he's shore
p'isonous as a t'rantler) cherishes the theery, an' gives it out
premiscuous as a hoss-back opinion, that a 45-calibre bullet ain't
able to worry him none; if he accoomilates one he allows he
assimilates it into his system, an' don't take no more account tharof.
That's his theery, an' as mebbe you-alls shrewdly surmises, it bogs
down in the dust before facts—an' it's this way; he's been a-loafin'
around Tombstone mebbe hard on the hocks of a year, an' the
camp's shore full to bustin' with his goin's on; and I ain't wonderin',
for there ain't a moon goes by without Tombstone's shy a citizen an'
mebbe a greaser or two, all corpses o' this P'ison Dick's layin' out.
"Wall, it's 'bout sundown, one day in the early fall, when a stranger
comes lopin' into camp on a played-out pinto pony, which he halts up
before the 'Gold Nugget,' old Konkey Bell's saloon, an' proceeds to
dismount tharfrom like as if he's some wearied an' bone-tired. I notes
this through the door, from where I'm buckin' a faro game, an'
likewise takes in a pair o' big black eyes an' a smooth face. 'It's a
boy,' I remyarks casual to myself as I coppers my bet, an' the next
minit I sees this here black-eyed foreigner up agen the bar, a-
swallowin' a drink 'longside o' P'ison Dick. It ain't manners none to
take a drink alone that-away, an' is liable to make a gent too
conspicuous to be healthy; but seein' he's a stranger and without
many rings on his horns, it passes. P'ison Dick scowls, but says
nothin'; then poco tiempo tells the bar-keep to set 'em up again.
"The bar-keep slams down a glass before the stranger, who pushes
it away some careless, an' allows he's done finished lubricatin'.
"P'ison Dick's eyes kinder narrowed like a snake's.
"'I'm askin' you to hev' a drink, stranger,' he says, colder'n ice in hell.
"You-alls may surmise the rest of us is some taciturn, not to say
mute a whole lot, an' some foxy longhorns is already takin' cover.
"The stranger smiles kinder queer at Dick—jest a mouth twist, his
eyes lookin' a heap grim; an' he stands thar for mebbe the length of
a drink o' whisky, then snaps out in a sorter shaky screech, 'To hell
with yer drink!' an' before you can turn a kyard over, he ups an' has
the glass bruck on P'ison Dick's crimson beak.
"By this move he has Dick some disgruntled an' gains more time to
draw; then, bang! go the gatlin's a'most together, an' Dick's theery
cuts adrift from him without strainin' itself none. He's dead meat that
sudden, he don't even have time to emit a groan.
"The stranger's hit too, plumb through the lung, an' pretty soon
cashes in likewise; but, where the game comes queer is this way.
That 'ere black-eyed party whom I allowed was a boy is a woman,
an' a mighty pretty one at that, though her sperit peters out 'fore we
is able to corral any reasons for the game she plays; an' as I pulls
my freight next sun-up I never does accoomilate no knowledge
tharof. Anyway, P'ison Dick gets his medicine an' lights out that
sudden for the heavenly pastures I reckons the angels, or more likely
it's them fork-tailed miscreant collectors, is some surprised to see
him bulgin' in an' defilin' the scenery o' their sperit-ranche."
"Well," observed Jack slowly, "astronomy's a science which gives a
wide fling to the imagination, and without those theories you despise
is liable to lose a great deal of interest. But let's look at Orion, the
finest constellation in the heavens. He's the greatest hunter the
world has ever known—Nimrod, who, with his dogs, has been placed
up in the heavens to hunt the Bull.
"D'you see that reddish star? That's Betelgeuse—Arabic beyt al
agoos, 'the old man's house.' Betelgeuse is a sun like our own, but a
cooling one, and represents the left shoulder of Orion, Bellatrix,
supposed to be a lucky star for women, being the right shoulder.
Those three bright stars in a line are the hunter's belt, whilst below is
Rigel—Arabic rigl, 'a foot'—being Orion's left foot.
"That big star of a delicate green is Sirius, the blazing dog-star,
Orion's great hunting dog."
"So!" drawled Broncho with a slow smile. "Smell-dawg or tree-
dawg?"[1]
"Sirius," went on Jack, taking no notice of Broncho's facetiousness,
"is the brightest star in the heavens, though not the biggest.
Canopus, though only half as bright, is immeasurably bigger; but if it
were as near to us as Sirius I expect it would shine in the sky with as
great a brilliance as our sun.
"Now, at the least computation, Sirius is fifty billion miles off, or five
hundred and thirty-seven thousand times as far from the earth as the
sun; and since light diminishes as the square of the distance
increases, the sun, if as far off as Sirius, would give us two hundred
and eighty-eight thousand million times less light than it does now.
"The character of Sirius' spectrum shows that, surface for surface, its
brightness is far greater than the sun's, and as Sirius is some twenty
times the size of the sun, Sirius is reckoned to shine some seventy
times as bright as the sun. This is putting the calculation at its
smallest. Good authorities put Sirius at twice that distance off, and
calculate the star's brilliancy as two hundred and eighty-eight times
greater than the sun's.[7] Now, when you come to contemplate
Canopus——"
"Hold on, son! Hold your horses there!" burst out Broncho, drawing a
long breath. "Sirius is a size too large for this child. My brain's dizzy
an' wobblin' with them Sirius calc'lations o' yours, an' if you turns
your wolf loose on this Canopus star, compared to which you allows
Sirius is merely a puny picaninny, you'll shore have me that locoed
an' brain-strained, tryin' to size up them measurements o' yours, I'd
be liable to dislocate my mental tissues an' stampede away into a
lunatic complete."
"Well, you needn't worry; astronomers are beaten by Canopus."
"If you-alls aims to surprise me by that statement, you don't succeed.
I bet a stack o' blues them astronomy sharps goes locoed or beds
down in their coffins 'fore they has time to round up the tally o'
Canopus," declared the cowpuncher.
"He's so far off," continued Jack impressively, "that if they used up all
the oughts in the world, they couldn't get his distance down on
paper."
"Tell us some more about Sirius," said Curly, his eyes bulging with
Jack's stupendous statements.
"Well, there is another queer thing about Sirius. He's got a big
companion-star fussing round him, which gives such a dim light it
can only be seen by the very biggest of astronomical telescopes.
There is no reason why there should not be many invisible as well as
visible stars in the firmament. As Bessel said, 'No reason exists for
considering luminosity an essential property of stars.'
"Just imagine, then, that it is quite possible that the heavens are not
only full of those bright globes we see night after night, but besides
them a multitude of dim, ghostlike stars, unseen by us, but there all
the same, are pacing along their allotted paths like the rest."
"Are these invisible, unlighted stars allowed by scientists, Jack?"
asked Curly, in a subdued voice of awe.
"Hinted at, hinted at," returned the rover carelessly. "But I'll tell you
something more wonderful to think of than that—the systems of
double, treble, and quadruple suns. Now, our solar system is at the
bottom rung of the social ladder in the heavenly world. We just have
a plain white sun, which we revolve round with regular seasons and
fixed day and night; but take a system that revolves round a double
star, and thus has two suns, and say these suns differ in colour,—as
is often the case, for every star has a colour of its own—Sirius is a
pale green, Aldebaran rose-red, Betelgeuse orange-red, Rigel a
blue-white, Capella a pearly white, and so on.
"Suppose, then, one of these suns is red and the other blue.
Imagine, if you can, the combinations of colour that ensue, not to
mention the variations in day and night and in the seasons.
"At one time both suns will be high in the heavens at once, one
shedding rays of red, the other rays of blue; and as they set in
different corners of the horizon, two gorgeously coloured sunsets
simply overwhelm the sky with beautiful colour-effects.
"At another time, perhaps, one sun will be above the horizon for half
the round of the clock, the other taking the other half—no night
during that period, simply so many hours of red and so many hours
of blue light, and perhaps the sunrise of the one coincides with the
sunset of the other. Ye gods! What a prospect! But how much further
does a quadruple system carry us—four suns glaring down upon
one; no nights at all now (the people in those systems no doubt have
reached a stage in the evolution of the body—if, indeed, they have
bodies at all—when sleep is no longer required), just days of every
hue, of every grade of colour—pale blue days, brilliant red days,
gorgeous yellow days, violet days, green days——"
"Good night, Jack," broke in the cowpuncher softly. "I guess I'll quit.
You're one too many for me; you have me beat to a stan'still. My
head'll burst if I accoomilates any more astronomy. It takes up too
much space in my brain-cells an' don' settle down none, but jest
rampages 'round stampedin' my intellec's out into the cold, till I
wonders, has I a headpiece at all or has it blowed off like a rawcket?"
This broke up the astronomy party, and the three rolled into their
blankets; but Curly, when he was turned out at one bell, complained
of a dream in which the devil, with a face of variegated colours, had
been grinning at him through Saturn's rings, whilst the grim shades
of ghost stars pranced before him in all manner of fantastic shapes,
headed by the monstrous fiery apparition of Sirius, whose flames,
spread out in great tentacles—a twisty, creepy, crawly mass of claw-
ended arms—sought to drag the terrified dreamer out of his
blankets.

FOOTNOTES:
[7] It is now known that these figures re Sirius are much
overstated.
 CHAPTER X
"STUDPOKER BOB'S MALADY"
Like most wooden ships, the Higgins had to be pumped out twice a
day, once in the morning watch and once in the second dog-watch.
A ship's pumps are worked by handle-bars on heavy flywheels, and
it is probably the finest exercise in the world for your back muscles,
especially if you have a bucko like Black Davis to watch over you
and keep you doing sixty revolutions to the minute for half an hour
without a spell.
The bosun was not such a keen muscle-developer, and in
consequence the starboard watch only averaged thirty-five to forty
revolutions a minute, and also had a spell-ho after fifteen minutes.
Notwithstanding this, Studpoker Bob, who had a horror of any sort of
form of muscle-developing, used to let his arms go round with the
brakes, and so managed that, instead of his arms pulling the brakes,
the brakes pulled his arms.
This man was fast beginning to show up in his true colours.
As Broncho observed to Jack:
"That ere kyard-sharp don't surge back on a rope suffeecient to
throw a calf. He's shore regyardful of his health that-away; yet he's
a-distributin' views in the foc's'le like as if he's the most put-upon
gent in the ship, which same views is shore fomentin' trouble."
"The man's a real waster," replied the rover. "I watched him dealing a
brace game last night against Hank, Ben, and those two tenderfoots,
Jimmy Green and Pinto. I believe he's got notes for most of the
men's paydays already, and now, as you say, he's trying in a sneaky,
underhand way to rake up trouble; but sailors always will walk blindly
into the ditch, and won't be warned."
"Which his mood is shore ornery an' he's plumb wolf by nacher; but
as you-alls sagely remyarks, them misguided shorthorns won't
believe it none, an' listens to his howlin' like he's the President of the
United States. It has me plumb wearied," and Broncho sniffed
disdainfully as he slowly filled his favourite corncob.
But matters were rapidly coming to a head. The Higgins had lost the
south-east trades, and was plunging into a heavy head sea under
topgallant-s'ls, whilst a succession of sprays turned the forward part
of the ship into a shower-bath, and ever and anon a green sea
tumbled aboard and roared aft.
The wind, a dead muzzler, was slowly increasing in strength, with an
edge to it which was a good foretaste of the "Roaring Forties."
To windward the sky had a dirty look, and untidy, threadbare storm-
clouds swept across it, whilst in the west the sun sank into a
greenish, sickly sea through a variegated mess of yellow tints.
The watch no longer went about bare-foot in thin dungarees; instead,
oilskins and sea-boots were the order of the day.
At four bells, 6 p.m., the port watch went below, and as they came
forward some of them presented a very curious appearance. Sam,
the coloured man, had supplemented his rags with odd bits of
dungaree and canvas, tied on to his body with numerous pieces of
ropeyarn; whilst Jim, the boy, swaggered along in an old blanket coat
of Jack's, which made him a good-sized overcoat.
The cockney went aft to relieve the wheel, a somewhat comical
figure in some Piccadilly masher's discarded town coat, with velvet
collar and cuffs, whilst the rest of the watch were turned out to man
the pumps.
They started briskly to work at a cry of "Shake her up, boys," from
the bosun.
Studpoker Bob, in his usual style, took special care lest he should
inadvertently put some weight on to the brakes, and was
succeeding, he thought, very well.
Jack, of course, was not the man to let the opportunity go by without
a chanty, and started off with:
"Were you never down in Mobile bay?"
The whole watch thundered in the chorus with the exception of the
gambler, who kept all his breath for his mutinous talk in the foc's'le.
As they swung the bars, deep came the note:
"John, come tell us as we haul away."
(Jack) "A-screwing cotton all the day."
(Chorus) "John, come tell us as we haul away.
Aye, aye, haul, aye!
John, come tell us as we haul away."
Then Jack went on:
"What did I see in Mobile Bay?"
(Chorus) "John, come tell us as we haul away."
(Jack) "Were the girls all fair and free and gay?"
(Chorus) "John, come tell us as we haul away.
Aye, aye, haul, aye!
John, come tell us as we haul away."
(Jack) "Oh! This I saw in Mobile Bay."
(Chorus) "So he tells us as we haul away."
(Jack) "A pretty girl a-making hay."
(Chorus) "So he tells us as we haul away.
Aye, aye, haul, aye!
So he tells us as we haul away."
So the chanty ran on gaily verse after verse, the chorus raised high
above the moaning of the wind and the groaning of the ship.
"Give us another!" was the general cry as the last verse finished, and
away went Jack again with "A-roving":

(Jack) "In Amsterdam there lives a maid—

Mark you well what I say—
In Amsterdam there lives a maid,
 And she is mistress of her trade.
I'll go no more a-roving from you, fair maid!"

(Chorus) "A-roving, a-roving, since roving's been my ruin,

I'll go no more a-roving from you, fair maid!"
This also ran its course, then Curly struck up "One more day for
Johnnie":
(Curly) "Only one more day for Johnnie."
(Chorus) "One more day!"
(Curly) "Oh! rock and roll me over!"
(Chorus) "One more——"
Then the bosun most rudely interrupted the music.
Biff! Bang! Thud! "You d——d sodgering hound!" Whack! "I've
watched you loafin' long enough!" Thump! and Studpoker Bob, lifted
clean off his feet by a sudden muscular grasp upon his collar, was
held at arm's length and fairly battered by the bosun's brawny fist.
Crash! an eye closed up.
"Mercy! mercy! you're killin' me!" whined the miserable wretch.
Bish! his nose began to bleed.
"Had enough yet, you d——d Yankee tough?" growled the bosun.
"Yes, yes; lemme——"
Crack! and his two front teeth were loosened.
"By gum! that were a sockdologer!" commented Bedrock Ben.
The men had stopped working and watched the gambler getting his
gruel with appreciative eyes.
"Now, then, put your back into it and no more sodgerin'!" said the
bosun, as he released his iron grip.
"I'll get even with you, you durned Britisher," snarled the card-
sharper, as soon as he was released, his anger overcoming his
caution.
"Give me lip, will ye?" roared the bosun. "Threaten me, would ye?"
Again he seized upon Studpoker Bob, and this time did not desist
from his chastening until the man dropped to the deck, beaten to a
jelly and hardly able to move.
At the wheel the cockney hopped up and down with excitement,
straining his neck in his eagerness to see the gambler get his
hammering, and a grim smile of amusement came into Old Man
Riley's keen visage, as he watched the performance with the eye of
an expert from the poop rail.
Letting his victim lie where he dropped, the bosun turned to the
pumps and called out, "Tune her up again, boys!" and presently
came the welcome cry, "That'll do the pumps!" and the watch
trooped forward.
Studpoker Bob, who had lain all this time groaning on the deck,
made shift now to get to his legs, and made tracks for the foc's'le.
But the bosun was on to him again.
"Here, you there," he called, "go up an' overhaul them fore an' main
t'gallant buntlines."
And up the man had to go.
It was now two bells, and Red Bill trudged slowly aft to relieve the
cockney, as he owed him a wheel, and the second dog-watch being
considered one of the worst wheels, the cockney had gladly
consented to take an hour of that instead of the whole trick at any
other time.
Diving through a curtain of spray, the rest of the watch reached the
foc's'le.
Hanging up their oilskins, they proceeded to make themselves
comfortable. Some crawled into their bunks for a short spell; others,
with pipes alight, sat round on the chests, then yarns and chaff
began to fly round.
Without it was cold and wet, nearly dark and with every prospect of a
dirty night.
The wind could be heard moaning and crying, whistling and
screaming through the rigging.
The ship groaned and creaked beneath the sledge-hammer blows of
the heavy head sea.
The sprays rattled outside, and all was dismal and comfortless. What
wonder if the watch below is one of the comforts of a sailor's life.
"Golly, byes!" burst out the cockney, as he dashed in dripping. "Poor
ole Bob, didn't 'e get it socked to 'im. 'E weren't 'ollerin' for more
when the bosun got through with 'im, were 'e? Sykes alive! but it
were a h'awful lickin'!"
"Begob! but it takes the divil an' all to tackle that big hefty brute of a
bosun; an' now he has the poor varmint overhaulin' buntlines. Be me
sowl, but Bob's fair up agin' it!" said Paddy.
"And serve him right. The amount of work he does wouldn't bother a
child," remarked Jack scornfully.
"Oh, Bob's orl right. 'Is trouble is weakness. 'Ow can 'e work? That
bloke ain't got more strength than a 'edge-sparrer; 'is 'ealth is give
h'out."
"Who told you that?" asked Jack.
"'E did 'imself, 'bout two days back."
"And whatever is the malady of this here weak-kneed kyard-sharp?"
inquired Broncho, in his slow, polite way.
"'E sez as 'ow h'it's consumption which 'as 'im in its gruesome
clutches."
"I ain't heard him kaufin' none," remarked the cowboy suspiciously. "I
cuts the trail one time of a gent who cashes in from that cawpse-
makin' complaint, an' he shore coughs a heap plentyful, an' that loud
an' wideflung you couldn't bed-down in the same teepee with him an'
make any sort o' success o' slumber. His kaufin' that-away shore
puts a bull-moose to shame."
"Now, see 'ere, ducky, I ain't er-sayin' as 'ow that ain't the general
racket; but Bob, 'e sez to me, sezzee, 'I'm past the korfin' styge; h'I
just spits up my lungs in chunks; h'I ain't the strength to korf,'"
returned the cockney doggedly.
"I ain't in line for no sech flapdoodle as that," drawled Broncho. "He
ain't goin' to fool this old he-coon none that-away. Why, consumption
can no more make a play without kaufin' than smallpox can without
spots."
"'Ave it 'ow you loike—h'I just tells you what 'e sez, that's h'all,"
retorted the cockney angrily.
"Thet's right, pard; but I reckons Broncho calls the deal correct when
he says that consumption ain't no more than a low-grade malady
without kaufin'. It's kaufin' that makes it the clean-sweep disease that
it is," joined in old Bedrock Ben.
"Bedad thin," commented Pat, "Bob's sick with consumption, but the
disaise ain't after makin' him ill at all."
"The man's as strong and well as you or I," exclaimed Curly hotly,
poking his head out of his bunk.
"I ain't sayin' but that if Studpoker Bob's got consumption prowlin'
around him, it ain't been an' staked out its claim an' started in to work
diggin' out his innards by now, after the energy the bosun displays
on him," went on Ben.
"And that ain't no bluff, neither. The bosun shore puts a heap o' zest
into the game, an' after bein' upheaved an' jumped on that-away, I
reckons Bob don't get so much bliss as he did," agreed Broncho.
At this moment, Jim, who had just been to strike one bell, dived in
glistening with wet.
"It's blowin' up hard; it'll be 'All hands to the crojjick' at eight bells, the
bosun says," he announced.
"What's that, sonny? All hands at eight bells? An' it's our first watch
below! Hell take the sea, anyhow," growled old Ben.
"We're in for a night of it. Listen to the wind," observed Curly.
There was a general rush for oilskins and rubbers.
"You'll want lashings on your oilskins to-night, Broncho," remarked
Jack, as he knotted a deep-sea lashing round his waist.
"An' what's the aim in life o' these here lashin's?"
"Ter keep the bloomin' water out, er course," jerked out the cockney,
as he struggled with a sea-boot.
"Where's that 'ere sufferin', consumption-stricken gent, Studpoker
Bob, all this time?" asked old Ben, looking round the foc's'le.
"He's warmin' an' repa'rin' himself in the galley, and havin' a chin-
chin with Lung," returned Jim.
"And he calls himself an American citizen," grunted Ben, in great
disgust. "I'd sooner exchange views with a pra'rie-dog or a gopher
than one o' them heathens from the Orient. They're all right to wash
clothes or toss flapjacks or sech-like plays, but to shake dice with
'em—no, sirree, that's what I calls plumb degradin'."
As he spoke the thundering voice of the bosun was heard.
"A-l-l h-a-n-d-s s-h-o-r-t-e-n s-a-i-l!"
Sure enough it was about time, for the wind was shrieking through
the rigging with more strength every minute, and at every plunge the
heavily pressed vessel sent the sprays right over her. The lee-
scuppers were full, and a succession of dollops poured over the
weather rail.
 CHAPTER XI
"THE STORMFIEND"
"Crojjick buntlines and clew-garnets!" roared Black Davis.
The men stumbled clumsily round the fife-rail and groped about in
the darkness for the right ropes; then, like sundry tug-of-war teams,
stood waiting for the word.
"Ready with your tack there, bosun?" called the mate.
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"Haul away!" came the order.
"Hoo-oop, come in with her! Ho-yah, an' she must!" sang Jack,
giving time to the hauling.
"Hand over hand, hand over hand!" yelled the bosun.
"Yo-ho-yo-ho-oh-yo-har!"
Swish! and a green sea tumbled aboard, washing the men at the
clew-garnet off their legs.
"Bedad, an' it's could!" gasped Pat.
"Thet'll do, y'r weather buntlines; haul away to leeward!" called the
mate.
"Hy-ei-ei-ei-ei-ei!" came the swelling chorus, the note rising at each
pull.
"Now, then, what ye crowdin' up like that for? Spread out! How can
you haul if you ain't got room?" holloaed the bosun. "Up with her,
boys, lively now, lively!" he cried sharply. "Oh ho! Two-block her!"
Suddenly from aft came the old man's voice, rising above the roar of
the gathering gale.
"Belay all that! Git them t'gallant-s'ls in, Mr. Davis, quick!"
"Aye, aye, sir!"
There was no time to lose. A nasty-looking heavy black cloud with
torn, ragged edges was racing up to windward.
"There's dirt in that," said the bosun to Jack, as they manned the
t'gallant clew-lines.
"Haul, yew mutton-faced haymakers, haul!" bellowed the mate.
The ship resounded with the cries of the men and the thunder of the
flogging canvas.
As the Higgins lay over, it was almost impossible to stand on her
gleaming wet decks, and to leeward the men on the spilling-lines
were up to their waists in broken water.
"Sweat her up, my barnacle-backs!" yelled the bosun encouragingly,
standing out a very tower of strength in the midst of the panting,
struggling men.
"There's snow coming," jerked out the rover to Broncho, as he
sniffed to windward.
First the mizzen topgallant-sail was clewed up and four light men
were sent aloft to make it fast; but it was touch and go whether the
fore and main topgallant-sails would be clewed up before the
approaching squall was upon them, and the men had only just got
out on to the footropes and started to fist the sails when it swooped
down upon the ship with a furious roar, accompanied by a mixture of
snow, hail, and sleet.
The driving snow thickened the darkness into the density of black
mud. The sleet spattered and hissed and the hail rattled, pounding
on the wet decks like dancing pebbles and beating with blood-
drawing force upon the grim, weather-worn faces.
Upon the yards, headed by the bosun, the men fought furiously with
the maddened canvas. Crooked fingers scratched despairingly at the
rigid curves, bleeding knuckles struck ragingly at the stubborn, iron-
like folds. Wildly-shouted commands, cut off by the hooting wind,
flew to leeward unheard.
The face of the bosun at the bunt of the main topgallant-sail grew
twisted and distorted with grimaces in his vain attempts to make the
men understand, unseen in the smothering darkness of the squall
even by the man next him; vainly he waved and gesticulated; again
and again his mouth shaped the words:
"All together! All together!"
The footropes swung violently as the savage sail jerked them, in a
vain attempt to dislodge the struggling men.
The Higgins lay over and over and yet over under the strength of the
blast; the covering-board disappeared, then the dead-eyes and the
topgallant rail; the sheerpoles were dipped, the fair-leads smothered,
and a hissing cauldron of seething white water boiled up to and over
the hatch tarpaulins.
Minutes passed and she lay steady, her lower yardarms spiking the
whirling smother to leeward, right over, pressed down and
overwhelmed by the fearful strength of the screeching tempest.
Then there came a lull. The gallant vessel gave a desperate quiver
as she struggled to rise, then slowly she brought her spars to
windward and shook herself free, the water pouring off the maindeck
and dragging the gear off the pins in a hideous tangle.
"Now! now! now!" screeched the bosun, his voice strained to
cracking point, and ten sets of hooked claws from ten burly fists
fastened upon the swelling breast of the main topgallant-sail.
A few inches were gained and stuffed between the groaning yard
and the straining, perspiring bodies. Again the aching finger-tips
caught hold; a foot came in this time, then another, and the men at
the yardarms fumbled for the gaskets.
"Catch a turn! catch a turn!" bellowed the bosun.
The cockney to windward, his sou'wester gone, his long hair
streaming in the wind, and his thin, comical face working furiously
with his efforts, managed to get the yardarm gasket passed.
One more heave and the sail was muzzled, and the worn-out men
clambered slowly down from aloft.
Meanwhile, Jack, Broncho, Hank, and the gambler were having the
time of their lives on the fore.
Jack, at the bunt, with a grim smile on his streaming face and eyes
gleaming with a kind of strenuous joy, leant far over and watched like
a prize-fighter for an opening.
Broncho and Hank, on each side of him, plucked furiously at the
tightly stretched canvas without success.
Like the bosun, Jack saw his chance in the short lull and grabbed a
fold, but it was too strong for him and tore itself free; again he dived
at it, but the sail, which had not been properly clewed up, behaved
like a fiend.
It bellied up in front of him and above him in raging protest, and
battered him mercilessly against the mast, whilst it nearly sent
Broncho and Hank headlong overboard.
The cowpuncher made a wild clutch at the man-rope as he was
hurled backward, and hung there, his muscles strained and cracking
as the canvas beat its weight upon him.
Hank, with both arms embracing the bunt-line, swung on the
footrope with head and shoulders buried in the shaking folds.
Unsuccessful in its murderous attempt, the sail dropped back and
the battle began anew.
Fiercely, enraged by the dastardly behaviour of the vicious sail, the
three deep-sea musketeers leant forward to the attack again.
Again and again the sail broke away from the clawing hands,
staining itself red with the blood from torn finger-nails and skinned
knuckles, until at last they got a firm hold.
Up it came, inch by inch; their arms groaned under the strain, their
curved fingers throbbed with fiery pains—still with gritted teeth, they
hung on.