A Global Agenda for the Cultural and Creative Industries: 11 key actions
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how the human spirit and creativity shines through even in the darkest hours. As the world attempts to navigate its way out of simultaneous public health, economic and climate crises, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reassess and reset the way we live, and to consider policies that promote sustainability and community well-being as well as economic growth.
This has also been the United Nations (UN) Year of the Creative Economy’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals and has highlighted the creative economy’s potential as a crucial part of the solution in this post-pandemic process of healing the planet, economy and society. It is in this context that the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC)’s International Council offers these eleven action points to optimise the potential of the creative sector in helping solve the challenges of the moment.
It is the first time an international group of this kind has come together – entrepreneurs, investors, policy-makers and academics from across the world – pooling our diverse experience of the creative economy to set out an agenda for the immediate future. We feel it is particularly important to highlight that this agenda is truly global, recognising that some of the most powerful and dynamic ideas and the fastest growth in the cultural and creative sectors are found in the Global South, including amongst informal workers in stressed and under-resourced urban areas.
While it is now widely recognised that the creative economy contributes to global prosperity, celebrates cultural distinctiveness, and supports social cohesion, it is still regarded as an outlier when it comes to policy action. Most of these eleven action points are already proving their value in parts of the world, though perhaps particularly amongst imaginative and inspirational local and municipal leaders, but they remain too often on the margins. Our message is that if we are to achieve the urgent reconfiguration the world needs, these ideas belong in the mainstream of public policy at local, national and international level.