Evaluating the European capital of culture that never was: the case of BrabantStad 2018

Major events such as the European capital of culture (ECOC) are becoming more important as tools for economic, social and cultural regeneration, and therefore it also becomes more important to monitor and evaluate their effects. This article analyses the development of the evaluation process for the ECOC programme in general, and then analyses a specific case study in the BrabantStad bid for the 2018 ECOC. It shows that event evaluation programmes have gradually grown in terms of scale and complexity as the ECOC has developed to the stage where multifaceted and longitudinal monitoring and evaluation have become the norm. However, as the analysis of the BrabantStad case shows, even with longitudinal monitoring of cultural, economic and social impacts, it is still difficult to provide a complete picture of the different types of effects being generated by the programme. In particular, this case illustrates the problem of paying adequate attention to a wide range of indicators, and the problems that can stem from over-concentration on the political dimensions of event effects.