Katowice a UNESCO Creative City of Music
The southern Polish city of Katowice, a UNESCO Creative City of Music for two years now, has been promoting young musical talent, financially supporting music projects and organising concerts to intensify the city's music life and attract more music lovers.
On Wednesday, the second anniversary of its Creative Cities Network membership, Katowice will host a marathon concert and a local edition of the Mix the City international project.
Mix the City is an online platform that invites people all around the world to discover the sights and sounds of a different region and create their own mix. Co-commissioned by the British Council and The Space, YouTube artist Kutiman launched the first Mix the City project in Tel Aviv in 2015, allowing users to create a mix from a set of 12 filmed tracks performed by musicians living in the city.
Katowice joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in mid-December 2015.
The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote co-operation among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. The cities currently making up the network work together towards a common objective: placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and co-operating actively at the international level.
The network is currently formed by 180 members from 72 countries covering seven creative fields, namely, Crafts & Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Music and Media Arts.
Katowice is the first Central European city to have become a UNESCO Creative City of Music. Krakow (southern Poland) has been a Creative City of Literature since 2013 and Lodz (central Poland) became a Creative City of Film in 2017.
Krakow and Katowice have been selected by the UCCN members to host the 12th UCCN Annual Meeting in June 2018. It will be themed Creative Crossroads. (PAP)
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