World Cities Culture Report 2014
The 2014 report examines the cultural offer of 24 of the world’s cities. It gathers evidence on 60 cultural indicators.
The Purpose
The World Cities Culture Report 2014 is a major global initiative on culture and the future of cities. It is a celebration of world cities as crucibles of human creativity and endeavour. From ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence and Elizabethan London to modern New York’s Broadway or Mumbai’s Bollywood, cities have been the places where culture develops and moves forward.
The Report
This report examines the cultural offer of 24 of the world’s greatest cities. It gathers evidence on 60 cultural indicators, assessing both the supply of and demand for culture, and reports on the thinking of cultural policymakers in those places. The level of detail of the cultural data collected across the cities is unprecedented, and represents the primary achievement of this research.
However, what makes the project even more valuable is its exploration of attitudes to cultural policymaking in the world cities. The potential for culture to contribute to economic and social development is understood by all the cities, but it plays out in different ways depending on the particularities of each place. Bringing an analysis of policymakers’ priorities together with the data gives a much more rounded picture of culture’s role in, and value to, world cities.
The first version of this report brought together 12 cities and was launched at the inaugural World Cities Culture Summit in London held at the same time as the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The report was expanded in 2013 and 2014 to include the 12 additional cities who have joined the World Cities Culture Forum since 2012.
