Cities of Art

UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network works with local artists, public agencies, and private supporters to nurture social and economic development while promoting global cultural diversity. The system works on both the macro- and micro-levels, encouraging the sharing of institutional, technical, an economic resources worldwide while preserving the uniqueness and local and regional cultures and integrating art into community life.

The program encourages cities to focus on one area of creativity, allowing them to emphasize existing traditions or cultivate new networks of artists. Literature, folk art, music, the culinary arts, and design receive support, as well as cinema. UNESCO also assists cities wishing to develop a media arts community–offering aid to multimedia and digital works. The media arts program has a particular focus on young artists. The Young Digital Creators “Scenes and Sounds of My City” project, for example, relied on teachers and students to design a collaborative exhibit incorporating audio sampling, photography, film, and performance installations to interpret urban life.

UNESCO views the city as a key nexus in creativity. While large enough to integrate cultural production into national and global economic networks, each ideally remains accessible by local artists. As the community grows, a “creative cluster” emerges from the interaction of the city’s socio-economic infrastructure and groups of artists. This parallels some of the conclusions reached in Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, which examined the appearance of an artistic, creative cohort and offered some suggestions for cultivating a more open and innovative climate.