2023 Year In Review

“Our network is going from strength to strength. It’s been another fantastic year supporting our cities to share their best cultural policy ideas”

Laia Gasch, Director, World Cities Culture Forum

As another year draws to a close we look back at nine key moments for the World Cites Culture Forum network in 2023.

Five new cities joined the network

We welcomed Bengaluru, Chicago, Kyiv, Rio de Janeiro and Shenzhen to the network, bringing the number of city partners in the network to forty four. The City of Kyiv’s were generously supported to join the network by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the cities of Edinburgh and London.

We held our Summit in São Paulo, our first in Latin America

In October we welcomed over 100 civic leaders to São Paulo, Brazil, for our annual World Cities Culture Summit under the theme was ‘Culture, Courage and Leadership for a New World’. From AI to climate change, power sharing to culture in conflict, city leaders discussed the most pressing challenges faced by the world’s leading creative cities today.  

We launched A Goal for Culture: São Paulo Manifesto

Whilst in São Paulo, 21 cities signed the São Paulo Manifesto, calling for culture to be a dedicated UN Sustainable Development Goal post 2030. The Manifesto sets out how recognising culture with a dedicated SDG can help meet the pressing challenges facing the globe, underscoring the ability of culture to build bridges, promote peace and understanding, inspire innovation and foster community pride and identity. 

Cities continued to share cultural best practice through our Leadership Exchange Programme

The final visits for this round of the Leadership Exchange Programme took place, with New York visiting London to learn about the city’s Culture at Risk office and Los Angeles and Paris shared ideas for cultural inclusion in Cultural Olympiads. The impact of the Leadership Exchange Programme is highlighted in our recent Impact Report.

We charted cities’ creative recovery from Covid in a new report with King’s College

Our research, released in July, emphasised how cultural policy fuelled recovery after Covid.

We carried out research to understand the cultural policy landscape in Sub-Saharan African cities

In partnership with British Council and Andani.Africa we researched the current challenges facing cultural policymakers in the Sub-Saharan Africa, including a hosting a series of online events with city leaders across the continent. We look forward to taking forward this work in 2024 to support African cultural policymaking.

We advocated for culture at events around the world

World Cities Culture Forum advocates and associates spoke at conferences and events around the world. The report is one of the most wide-ranging studies on the long-term effects of Covid on culture in major cities, analysing over 270 new policy initiatives.

We hosted online events allowing cities to share policy insights

We hosted online events attended by an international audience of over 600 policy makers from 100+ cities on a range of topics. These events allowed invited cultural policy experts to share insights with a global peers, beyond those who make up our core network.

We became a UK registered charity

In September, World Cities Culture Forum became a UK registered charity. Becoming a charity will help us strengthen the global representation of our city partner network and build new collaborations.

We look forward to working with cities to share more inspiring cultural policy ideas next year.

Watch and share our highlights video from 2023 below.