Mayors of UN Creative Cities including Kuching South pledge commitment in cultural promotion

KUCHING (July 17): The 16th Unesco Creative Cities (UCCN) Conference, which took place in Braga, Portugal recently, gathered some 600 representatives from Creative Cities around the world.

Themed ‘20 Years of UCCN: Bringing Youth to the Table for the Next Decade’, the conference carried out knowledge-sharing and networking sessions involving 250 international cities, which leveraged on culture and creativity in building resilient and inclusive cities around the world.

However, the high-level highlight was the Mayors’ Forum, which brought together mayors from around the globe to sign the Braga Manifesto, signifying their commitment in promoting culture at the local government level.

Kuching South mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng, who was among the signatories, said it was the second Unesco conference that Kuching has attended since its designation as a Unesco Creative City.

“It’s the most important event on the Unesco calendar, in that it brings together representatives of cities from all the Creative City clusters: namely literature, music, crafts and folk arts, and media arts.

“It also includes representatives from Unesco, coming to share with others the broader themes of the network,” he said in a news release issued by UCCN Kuching.

According to Wee, Kuching is now well-established in this network.

“We have been able to make strong connections with regional and international cities, both in our gastronomy cluster and also in other creative fields.

“This is a great opportunity for our creative sector going forward. These are the relationships that we will be relying on during our own proposed Creative Cities Forum, which will be held in Kuching this September.

“This event aims to bring in those from 15 Creative Cities from around Asean in a similar event, at a regional level, for the benefit of Kuching’s domestic stakeholders,” he said.

Meanwhile, Unesco’s focal point and strategic director Karen Shepherd said the conference presented the publication of a major piece of research on the network’s impact.

It also looked forward to the implementation of the Mondiacult Resolution, putting culture at the heart of the post-2030 sustainable development agenda, she noted.

“Beyond that, various cities shared their approach to the future of culture, from youth engagement to the application of AI (artificial intelligence),” she said.

Shepherd said the next Unesco conference would be held in the City of Design – Queretaro in Mexico.

“In preparation for that, the host city has matched us all with a partner at random each. Kuching is tasked with preparing a project over the next year with Idanha-a-Nova, a Creative City of Music in Portugal.

“This will promote cross-cluster collaboration among creative cities,” she said.

Kuching has been a Unesco Creative City since 2021.

For more information, go to www.kuchingcreativecity.com, or reach out via [email protected].