Fashioning a city of culture: ‘life and place changing’ or ’12 month party’?

The current trend in public policy is to valorise culture as a tool for social, economic and political transformation. This paper offers a direct contribution to debates that seek to unpack and problematise cities of culture. We adopt a more circumspect approach towards some aspects of the anticipated transformative powers of culture, and in particular the tendency to fetishize the economics of culture. Our empiricism is grounded in a detailed study of Derry~Londonderry as the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013. We question whether City of Culture was ‘life and place changing’ or a ’12 month party’, and reveal different interpretations of success. In our view there is more potential in viewing culture as a peace resource for overcoming divisions in a socially and culturally segregated city, rather than its ability to tackle entrenched economic problems. Moving beyond the specifics of the case study we also provide lessons for future cities of culture and more generalizable insights for the academic and policy literatures.

A Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification Method for Rapid Direct Detection and Differentiation of Non-pathogenic and Verocytotoxigenic Escherichia coli in Beef and Bovine Faeces

The aim of this study was to develop a multiplex loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method capable of detecting Escherichia coli generally and verocytotoxigenic E. coli (VTEC) specifically in beef and bovine faeces. The LAMP assay developed was highly specific (100%) and able to distinguish between E. coli and VTEC based on the amplification of the phoA, and stx1 and/or stx2 genes, respectively. In the absence of an enrichment step, the limit of detection 50% (LOD50) of the LAMP assay was determined to be 2.83, 3.17 and 2.83-3.17 log CFU/g for E. coli with phoA, stx1 and stx2 genes, respectively, when artificially inoculated minced beef and bovine faeces were tested. The LAMP calibration curves generated with pure cultures, and spiked beef and faeces, suggested that the assay had good quantification capability. Validation of the assay, performed using retail beef and bovine faeces samples, demonstrated good correlation between counts obtained by the LAMP assay and by a conventional culture method, but suggested the possibility of false negative LAMP results for 12.5-14.7% of samples tested. The multiplex LAMP assay developed potentially represents a rapid alternative to culture for monitoring E.coli levels in beef or faeces and it would provide additional information on the presence of VTEC. However, some further optimisation is needed to improve detection sensitivity.