Cultural Cities

The new UBC Cultural Cities Commission has already launched its activities. The Commission wants to be a voice for culture to make the cultural issues better heard and included into all policies on local, regional, national and international levels.

The impact of culture on society and economy of the region and its development seems to be evident but it is still undervalued. There is a need to improve the communication between cultural, administrative, financial, economic and educational sectors to fully use the potential of culture. How to more engage culture and creativity in building a stronger, more competitive, sustainable and smart Baltic Sea area?

The UBC Cultural Cities Commission has developed four objectives:

1. Network based cultural cooperation, promoting a more intensive cooperation between the UBC cities;
2. Professionalization of the cultural field, based on the exchange of knowledge and experience through project cooperation, meetings and conferences, and communication;
3. Strategic partnerships, namely cooperation with other organisations and cultural institutions;
4. Research.

Also, the Commission wants to work strategically and cross border with national and international bodies dealing with policy making for sustainable and inclusive development within the Baltic Sea strategy and EU 2020 strategy. But the key Commission’s partners are the cities.

The Editorial Board would like to invite the cities to share their experience on cultural field to get an overview of the main trends and development in bridging culture and creativity with development agendas.

-           How can culture and creativity contribute to local and regional development in the Baltic Sea region?

-           How does your city use the potential of culture and creativity?

-           How does culture meet and mix with social innovations, entrepreneurship, and education?

-           What kind of projects within the cultural field does your city implement? How are the inhabitants involved in the cultural activities?

-           How does your city support local cultural organizations?

-           Does you city cooperate on international level in the field of culture?

-           Do you have concrete suggestions or projects on how to meet the current challenges trough culture in the Baltic Sea region, such as youth unemployment, migration flow and social    inequality in order to build more sustainable, equal and coherent Baltic Sea region / or local level?

-           Do you have innovative examples to share how cultural projects can be run together with local authorities, artists, sponsors and private sector? How to create financially stable and creative cooperation among these actors?

As usual, apart from the main theme, we are looking forward to receiving stories on interesting events and daily news from our member cities. Those articles are published in the chapter "News from Member Cities".

• Call for stories - full text (71.49 KB)