The City of Terrassa will organise the virtual event 'Preventive Creativity', where nine UNESCO creative cities will give voice to artists, creators and intellectuals in remote meetings to discuss solutions on cultural industry.

This 1st virutal meeting of artists and professionals from creative cities in Spain will be attended by experts from various creative fields, including literary creation, gastronomy, music and the film industry. Other artists from fields such as sculpture, design, drawing, architecture or painting will also participate to the event, giving insights on the growth prospects of the cultural and creative sectors, even in times of crisis. The meeting will host roundtables led by representatives from the creative cities of Granada, Burgos and Llíria in order to discuss the different realities of the cultural sector facing the current crisis, the artists' resilience in the adversity difficult situation and the role of creativity in the reconstruction of the cities for the future.

More information here.

As part of ICLEI's #DaringCities 2020 programme, the Climate Heritage Network, together with several other key partners, will co-organise a side-event on "Cities, Climate and Culture: The Urban Research Agenda in the Upcoming IPCC Co-Sponsored Expert Meeting on Culture, Heritage and Climate Change", where the Committee on Culture of UCLG will be invited as a panelist. 

The session will be organised on next 13 October 2020, from 14:00-15:30 UTC+2. Online registration is mandadory to attend the event.

More information on the session here. 

More information on the partnership with the Climate Heritage Network here.

PIG is an experiment in collective decision-making: an art installation in the form of a giant transparent piggy bank in public space accompanied by a short message: members of the public can put money into Pig’s ‘community fund’ if they want to, and spend it when they’ve agreed how to spend it.

The initiative is led by the company Kaleider and supported by In Situ. An assessment report on the initiative entitled "A Cultural Policy Contribution to the Evaluation of Art in Public Space" has been coordinated by On The Move, with research from the UCLG Committee on Culture.

The report is available here.

More info can be found here.

The Young Researchers Conference on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy organised by Istanbul Bilgi University UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy will be held online on 21-22 August 2020 with the aim to:

• Raising the recognition of cultural policy and cultural diplomacy based on cultural diversity in the academic arena
• Enabling young researchers who work at the main disciplines of cultural policy and cultural diplomacy to share their research findings and open them to discussion
• Creating an international sharing and interaction platform
• Identifying the common interests of the researchers from the global South and the global North and create co-working opportunities

Join Youtube to follow the Conferecne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo1LiaVl6yw

More information: https://yrc.bilgi.edu.tr/en/

The City Council of Rome, together with UCLG and its Committee on Culture, will organise a public event on next 27 July 2020 (15h00-16h30 CET) to publically present the 2020 Rome Charter on the Right to Fully and Freely Participate in Cultural Life.

The Charter is being elaborated by the City Council of Rome and the UCLG Committee on Culture, through a participatory and co-creation approach that includes various phases and consultation processes. 

The public event will aim at presenting the results of the first phase of the elaboration of the Charter, which is now available in English, French, Spanish and Italian, and it will also introduce to the next steps of the process.

In the context of the High-Level Political Forum organised by the United Nations from 7-16 July 2020, the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, facilitated by UCLG, has convened a Local and Regional Governments' Day on 10 July 2020, from 12.30pm-17.00pm CET. 

In this context, the Vice-Mayor of Rome, in charge of Cultural Development, M. Luca Bergamo and the UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, Ms. Karima Bennoune, were invited to speak in the final session, entitled "Accelerating transformation from the ground-up in a post-Covid era", where they respectively presented the 2020 Rome Charter on Cultural Rights, and reflected on cultural rights in the city in times of crisis and beyond.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdZHFdPWPow&feature=youtu.be

Creative FLIP recently published an analysis report which aims at a more crisis-resilient Access to Finance eco-system for the cultural and creative sectors.

The report elaborated by Sylvia Amann, Creative FLIP senior expert on Finance for CCI, identifies main trends and first policy recommendations.
It is based on a screening of the EU Covid19 platform www.creativesunite.eu and additional good practices identified from the EU Member States and international stakeholders.

View the report here : https://creativeflip.creativehubs.net/2020/07/06/guiding-resilient-financing-systems-for-the-ccs-creative-flip-publishes-analysis-report/

The new IAEC (International Association of Educating Cities) Monograph on "City, Culture and Education" will be presented on 2 July at 10h GMT+2 (Barcelona local time).

The session will count with interventions from Michel Vallée, former Director of Culture of Vaudreuil-Dorion; Ernst Wagner from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Jordi Pascual, coordinator of the UCLG Committee on Culture; and Marina Canals, Secretary General of the International Association of Educating Cities.

You can register to attend the session here.

The Beethoven Pastoral Project, an initiative by the UN Climate Change and BTHVN2020, is dedicated to promoting action on climate change and the environment in this 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birth.

A Declaration by Artists, Musicians and Creatives was formally launched on 5 June 2020, which is the UN World Environment Day. It is available in English, German, French and Spanish, and it has been signed by more than 220 artists and cultural actors from around the world.

We invite you to promote and endorse the Declaration through this link.

The cultural mobilization of cities and local governments in the COVID-19 crisis

The humanity is facing an enormous challenge. The COVID-19 crisis has an impact in all dimensions of our lives: the public health, the labour systems, the social interaction, the political debate, the use of public spaces, the economy, the environment, and the cultural life.

COVID-19 is hitting the cultural life of our communities very severely. Libraries, memorials, community centres, museums and all cultural venues, have suffered several weeks of lockdown; some of them are still closed and some are getting ready to reopen with physical distancing measures. Performances, festivals, parades, carnivals and intangible heritage events have been cancelled, and there is still uncertainty on how these events will take place again. The online presence of cultural institutions and organisations has exponentially gorwn. Workers in the sectors, who are often in an already precarious situation (self-employed, freelancers) may be left for months without any income. The active involvement of all in the cultural life of the community is very damaged by COVID-19, and so is the welfare and the quality of our democracies.

The Committee on Culture of UCLG has elaborated a webpage on the issue. This page is updated daily and shared on social medias, using the tag #CultureCOVID-19

This page is part of the "Live Learning Experience: beyond the immediate response to the outbreak", developed by UCLG.