Official: Melbourne now has a world-class story to tell

WITH the same sense of exposition and immaculate timing of any denouement, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), gathering all the suspects into the library, has named Melbourne its second City of Literature just days before the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival. At the same time, the other City of Literature, Edinburgh, is in the middle of its festival, which has a strong writers' component.

What this honour means for Melbourne, apart from a natural twinning with its well-read Scottish cousin, ennobled in 2004, is that the city will be the 11th creative city in the UNESCO network representing various cultural endeavours and which includes such far-flung metropolises as Santa Fe, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Bologna.

With 19 other cities under evaluation, this network is growing apace. Unlike gaining Olympic accreditation and working for years towards 16 days of frenetic activity, this recognition is for places whose cultural worth — not only in literature but craft and folk art, gastronomy, music, media arts and design — is already established to the point where it can be built on and enhanced as part of a complex cultural mixture. The awarding of such a distinction is, in effect, a receipt for goods that have already been delivered and whose continued supply is in no doubt.

Read the full story of this great accolade for Melbourne at The Age online.