Culture for Cities and Regions: Regional hot spots of creativity: a peer-learning study visit to North Portugal

The Culture for Cities and Regions project is organising a three-day study visit to Porto and the North Portugal region (17-19 February 2016) to explore the hot spots of creativity of the region, and notably creative hubs.

The study visit will aim at facilitating peer-learning between 20 representatives of cities and regions coming from all over Europe.
This follows up on our previous study visits in:
– Nantes and its creative cluster at the heart of the city;
– Creative Wallonia and its holistic programme to rejuvenate the region through the creative economy;
– Nord-Pas de Calais on the regeneration dynamics around the Louvre-Lens.
– Bologna – IncrediBOL! a bottom-up initiative supporting creative businesses
– Dundee – a medium-sized city with a highly ambitious agenda for culture and creative industries
– Birmingham on involving residents and communities for inclusive cultural policies.

Reports from those previous study visits are available here.

Northern Portugal has been one of the country’s leading regions for an integrated approach to cultural and economic development. For more than a decade, culture has played a leading role in local development. Porto and Guimarães were European Capitals of Culture (respectively in 2001 and 2012).
Since 2008 the region invested significantly in the creative industries, leading to the development of a diverse infrastructures, ranging from incubators, digital centers, fab-labs, co-workings, to R&D centers. Incubators, fab-labs and co-working spaces alone are now up to 50 across the Northern Region.
A delegation of 10 European cities or regions will exchange on North Portugal’s experience on supporting creative entrepreneurship, coming from Angers (Denmark), Budapest (Hungary), Central Finland – Jyvaskyla (Finland), Dortmund (Germany) Dundee (United Kingdom), Kaunas (Lithuania), Kiev (Ukraine), Nicosia (Cyprus), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Wallonia (Belgium). These high-level civil servants and policy-makers dealing with creative industries and entrepreneurship policies have been selected after a call for expression of interest.
They will be accompanied by Arthur Le Gall (KEA project manager) and Tom Fleming (Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy), who will share their hands-on experience on culture and creative industries policies that will be covered throughout this visit, such as:
– The dynamics of city policies across the region, with former European Capitals of Culture (Guimaraes 2012 and Porto 2001) and Braga, candidate to the UNESCO Creative City Network.
– Creative places such as hubs, incubators and co-working spaces
– Public/private models to support creative industries
– Universities and creative entrepreneurship: from R&D to incubating start-ups

The full case study on North Portugal is available at: https://culturalheritageinaction.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/2015021.pdf

For more information contact: Arthur Le Gall