Creativity as a tool for the present emergency and a basis on which to rebuild the future of our cities. This was the starting point for the annual meeting of UNESCO Creative Cities in Italy.
Design for future
In the wake of the COVID-19 emergency and the debate that began a year ago, the meeting held under the aegis of Torino Design of the City provided an opportunity to further examine the current crisis, which is affecting all aspects of what we call the ‘creative city’, affecting the creative, productive, distribution and educational fabric.
Our experiences in the pandemic have led to the need to network in order to breathe new life into the hardest-hit economic sectors, starting with the cultural sector, and to find solutions together to adapt to the ‘new normal’ that our society is embracing.
In such a scenario, the work of the UNESCO Creative Cities coordination network, set up in 2016 precisely to develop forms of collaboration and innovative projects linking cultural heritage and creativity, firstly at regional and national level, but also from a global perspective, is therefore more necessary than ever.
A network with Turin at its heart
Turin has been a UNESCO Creative City for Design since 1 December 2014: first Italian city within this category.
The title of Creative City recognised Turin’s merit of “having been able to highlight its identity, combining its historical industrial profile with new vocations in the fields of research and technology, education and knowledge, culture, the arts and tourism”.
Design for levering collaborative projects
Design for the city is certainly one of the main keys to the economic and social development of a city.
Today, Turin is at the centre of a real urban revolution. A revolution that uses design as a working method capable of giving shape even to unexpressed and latent needs through the contribution of technicians, and the help of experts from different backgrounds and sectors to imagine possible solutions with the aim of:
- involving citizens, as actors, together with technicians, administrators and stakeholders in projects that redesign services, neighbourhoods and places in the city;
- pursuing the reflections and initiatives to be proposed, linking them to a common denominator: universal accessibility and design for everyone;
- continuing and fostering relationships, partnerships and synergies across different areas and levels: local, national and international;
- enhancing, internationalising and promoting the creative, productive and entrepreneurial system of Turin’s design industry with a focus on new experiences in innovation and digital technology at national and international level.
The UCCN (Unesco Creative Cities Network) now encompasses 295 centres in 90 countries worldwide and rewards cities that promote urban and sustainable development through culture and craftsmanship, design, film, gastronomy, music, new media and literature.
