BTW when I say diversity, it's meant in the traditional sense but I'd also like to see a few new names thrown into the pot. There are a lot of the usual suspects in both lists above (did I mention Soweto Kinch? Oops!).

I'm keen to make this a grass roots festival, where the citizens are involved from the start. This is why I am so keen to use the blogospere of Birmingham to decide whether (a) Birmingham should bid for the Capital of Culture (b) what that culture should be.

From the Council's viewpoint, we can pull together the present festivals that are happening eg Dance Festival in April/May; the various cultural festivals; Pride; Museum and Art Gallery exhibitions; the Autumn Festival or whatever guise that ArtFest takes; the German Market; so on.

Around this larger festivals, we would include and promote the smaller niche festivals. As the new Cabinet member for Leisure, sport and Culture, I asked my portfolio officers to get a small fund together to help support entrepreneur led niche festivals. These festival do not require much money to assist them (£5000, £10,000), but they do raise the profile of Birmingham nationally. My officers have managed to get a small amount of money from the Working Neighbourhoods Fund to do this.

Coming to Jon Bounds view that the festival needs a curator. I'm not sure that the overall year long festival needs an artistic curator, but the individual large art festivals do need curators. The Manchester International festival uses a guest curator each year to create new pieces of work. This year it was Damon Albarn. My portfolio is looking at this model for a possible Autumn Festival, but it will cost and we want to seeing if our partners such as AWM and the Art Council are willing to financially contribute before making a decision. In the present financially atmosphere, this festival may be difficult to fund.

Can I finally add, that my list of iconic images of Birmingham has received an amount of stick. It was a first attempt to think of images of Birmingham that people would recognise. It was merely an attempt to stimulate the debate on 'what is the culture of Birmingham?'.

If 'A', then an even more important question would seem to be: How are these things judged? What are the panel who make the decisions actually looking for?

It's difficult to see how you might proceed at all without answers to these.

I'm with Chris on the Balcon thing. Great example of Brum's role in cultural leadership. Actually, maybe 'Cultural Leadership' is a strand in the bid. That way you get to make reference to some of those in the Mullaney list but you cite them for a reason rather than arbitrarily as is too often the case (see, I'm already thinking how the words are organised on paper, I can't help myself). So the stuff Capsule are doing about Heavy Metal heritage can play a part here as it positions that genre as culturally important and demonstrates Birmingham and the West Midlands role in leading a significant area of popular culture. It's not just pointing at Ozzy.

One thing is clear on this. The city council has to lead, they are the accountable body. But they mustn't shape. That has to come from citizens and those in cultural positions in the city. There's a pre-existing 'Birmingham Cultural Partnership' and a 'Creative Birmingham' board who will probably have a role here (and should) but I wonder if the constituency that Mullaney wants to hear from (that's you Jon, and others) is maybe still a bit too fractured, too informal for the city to be able to listen to. This offers a good opportunity to firm up some relationships perhaps?