Last week UNESCO adopted a convention enabling countries to protect their cultural production and to limit import of culture from abroad. Rather than just a way to safeguard cultural diversity or to oppose US cultural dominance, the convention should be seen as an attempt by nation-states not to entirely lose control over the production of […]

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have agreed to financially support Creative Commons The Netherlands (CC-NL) for the coming two-and-a-half years.
CC-NL will use the money to develop the following activities:
* Supporting the use of Creative Commons licenses in The Netherlands.
* Carrying out research about the use of […]

Yesterday, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted a ‘Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions’. In short, the Covention reinforces the right of national states “to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions” and “to create the conditions for cultures to clourish and to freely interact in a mutually […]

Last week the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science published a memorandum on creative industries in The Netherlands. The memorandum is titled ‘Ons Creatief Vermogen’ (something like ‘Our Creative Capacity’) and lists a number of policy measures that will be taken to strengthen the creative industries. A total […]

I am a bit late posting this message, but it is still worth putting it on the blog. An interesting new initiative was launched last week in Britain by the Royal Society of Arts: the Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation and intellectual property.
The Adelphi Charter comes with new principles for copyrights and patents. It also […]

Brisbane, Australia will never ever look the same. Read this article in The Courier-Mail to find out what Brisbane will look like in five years from now. Of course there cannot be any large-scale urban redevelopment scheme without an arts precinct.
An interactive map with artists’ impressions of the redevelopment areas can be found here.

‘How can a city that looks so stagnant in some areas be booming so dramatically in others? Or, as Portland State urbanist Ethan Seltzer puts the question, “What’s a better measure of the economy: unemployment numbers or skycranes?”‘
That’s the big question in Portland. Find out more in this interesting article.

Guide to the new creative economy
How would Britain look like if the entire working population would be employed in the creative industries? The Fish Can Sing has just published a vision of Creative Britain in ten years time. The book, Creative World, can be downloaded here. The books starts by outlining how creativity and new […]