Creative Recovery: The Role of Cultural Policy in Shaping Post-Covid Urban Futures

cmcikings

Sep 30

The World Cities Cultural Forum are collaborating with King's College London on 'Creative Recovery: The Role of Cultural Policy in Shaping Post-Covid Urban Futures', a research project investigating the important role of culture to drive COVID recovery in global cities.

City governments across the world have made varied responses, and this is beginning to be documented across a range of academic work. What has not yet been substantially addressed is the role of art and culture will play in post-COVID cities, and in helping urban centres to 'build back better'. Given the crucial roles that art and culture play in urban life, this is an urgent issue. Our question, then, is: within the process of urban recovery, what is the role of cultural policy in enabling better futures?

The King's team combines researchers in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries (Dr Jonathan Gross, Dr Lucy McFadzean, Prof Roberta Comunian) the Department of Geography (Prof Philip Hubbard, Dr Luke Dickens) and the Policy Institute (Dr Niall Sreenan and Dr Kirstie Hewlett), with expertise spanning cultural policy, urban policy, urban creative economies, and urban futures., with expertise spanning cultural policy, urban policy, urban creative economies, and urban futures. We have already begun work into the existing academic literature on this topic, and over the coming months we will be using a combination of research methods to answer our research question.

We are very pleased to be making use of invaluable data from the World Cities Cultural Forum, collected in the 18 months following the outbreak of COVID-19 including city -to city webinars sharing solutions in real time and a database of policy responses to COVID compiled by World Cities Cultural Forum members. In addition, the King's research team will also be collecting new data as part of the project. Dr Jonathan Gross and Dr Lucy McFadzean will attend at the World Cities Cultural Forum Helsinki summit, where we know many of these urgent questions around urban recovery, post-COVID cities and cultural futures will be discussed.

The project will generate insights into the role of cultural policy in post-Covid urban recovery, which we will publish in a report published in spring 2023.