The United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013
The United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013, Special Edition, builds on the 2008 and 2010 Reports, widening contributions to unlock the huge untapped potential of the creative economy at the local level as a way to promote a new kind of development experience.
The creative economy is not only one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy, it is also a highly transformative one in terms of income generation, job creation and export earnings. But this is not all there is to it. For unlocking the potential of the creative economy also means promoting the overall creativity of societies, affirming the distinctive identity of the places where it flourishes and clusters, improving the quality of life there, enhancing local image and prestige, and strengthening the resources for the imagining of diverse new futures.
In other words, in addition to its economic benefits, the creative economy also generates non-monetary value that contributes significantly to achieving people-centred, inclusive and sustainable development.
This Special Edition argues that the creative economy is not a single superhighway but a multitude of local trajectories, many of which are to be found at the subnational level – in cities and regions. It examines the interactions, specificities and policies at local levels and how the creative economy is practically promoted in communities, cities and regions across the developing world.
The evidence provided demonstrates how the cultural and creative industries are among the “new development pathways that encourage creativity and innovation in the pursuit of inclusive, equitable and sustainable growth and development” that the United Nations System Task Team on the Post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda exhorts the international community to take.
All these matters are explored in the Introduction and seven analytical chapters of this Report. The eighth and concluding chapter summarizes the lessons learned and makes ten recommendations for forging new pathways for development.
The full Report is available on the Internet at http://www.unesco.org/culture/pdf/creative-economy-report-2013.pdf and
