Square Mile, Round Mile

It is still a little known fact that the City of London and the City of Derry/Londonderry are linked in a rather unique way. The current form of Derry/Londonderry with its still intact walls (one mile round) was not only built by money from London companies but is still owned by the Honourable The Irish Society - a committee of the Corporation of London established by Royal Charter in 1613. Relations between the square mile of the City of London and the round mile of Derry/Londonderry have very often been about trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. As the 400th anniversary of the relationship is fast approaching in 2013 it brings the shared histories into sharp focus.

Last week on the 07th and 8th of April 2011 Voluntary Arts Ireland helped host a visit by the Barbican Centre and the Honourable The Irish Society to look at shared programming, co-commissioning and knowledge exchange in the context of Derry/Londonderry's City of Culture year also in 2013. Louise Jeffrey's - Director of Programming, Sean Gregory - Director of Creative Learning, Catherine McGuinness - Board of Barbican and Deputy Governor of the Honourable The Irish Society, and Edward Montgomery - the Irish Society's local representative took a whirlwind tour around Derry's cultural, educational and creative organisations.

What struck me was the possibility to look at the City of Derry/Londonderry as an interconnected cultural cluster, a place where you could programme across spaces, landscape, art forms and themes, across voluntary, community and professional arts. The city as a whole is compact enough to create this dynamic. Within the city walls alone there are at least 7 arts venues alongside a huge range of organisations and creative businesses. If you add the soon to be developed cultural cluster at Ebrington Barracks - no longer needed for military purposes - which is going to be joined to the city walls across the River Foyle by a foot and cycle bridge, the heart of the city will be transformed into an engine of cultural activity. Even this is not the whole story. Community and voluntary arts organisations across the city region have been keeping communities together through the arts for decades and as well as the city centre focus there are hubs of artistic endeavour operating at the very core of local communities.

The very big challenge with this is of course how to make the local relationships strong and effective so that the cultural offer in Derry/Londonderry can operate as a whole, as individuals and as ad hoc partners for particular projects including working with international partners. In the end it is likely to be the people and the relationships that matter and it is in that space that the work is needed. My guess is that this is not a challenge that is unique to Derry/Londonderry. No doubt the City of London faces this too.

The concept of the Square Mile, Round Mile was first articulated by the brilliantly insightful Ian Ritchie of the City of London Festival, who has championed shared programming between the two cities for a number of years. How the City of Derry and the City of London shape this towards 2013 will be fascinating.