Little willies as community-building heritage: A bottom-up approach to the European Capital of Culture initiative

Abstract

The ambitious 11fountains project was a flagship feature of the programme that won Leeuwarden (Netherlands) the title of European Capital of Culture for 2018. Eleven international artists were invited to design fountains for 11 towns in the province of Friesland. Feeling side-lined in the project, local Frisians responded by erecting their own fountain, which was decorated with 230 stylised penises and concealed a toilet. Drawing on theories of heritage and community formation to frame this fountain as a case study, I develop a concept of ‘community-building heritage’. Community-building heritage is participatory, dependent on citizen contributions and explicitly aims to mobilise and connect individual contributors in a community. Understanding community-building heritage as an act of cultural self-signification, I argue that its facilitation within the European Capital of Culture initiative, either in official programming or as counter-initiative, may contribute to a more bottom-up and constructivist approach towards community constitution within European Union cultural policies.