Charles Laundry developed the “Creative city “ as a concept in the late 1980’s and has since become a global movement reflecting a new planning paradigm for cities. It is described in his The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators and other writings. “The Creative City when introduced was seen as aspirational; a call to encourage open-mindedness and imagination implying a dramatic impact on organizational culture. Its philosophy is that there is always more creative potential in a place. It posits that conditions need to be created for people to think, plan and act with imagination in harnessing opportunities or addressing urban problems. These might range from addressing homelessness, to creating wealth or enhancing the visual environment.

Its assumption is that ordinary people can make the extraordinary happen if given the chance. Creativity is seen as applied imagination. In the Creative City it is not only artists and those involved in the creative economy that are creative, although they play an important role. Creativity can come from any source including anyone who addresses issues in an inventive way be it a social worker, a business person, a scientist or public servant.

Cultural Industries are increasingly becoming important components of the modern economy and knowledge based society due to their impact on the enrichment of development.

“The culture sector generates two types of impact: non-economic and economic. The non-economic impacts that cultural industries have on social development can be seen in the field of social cohesion and integration of marginalized groups, affirmation of creativity, talents and excellent, development of cultural diversity, national identity and the identity of different cultural groups, facilitating creativities and innovation.” Extract from “Measuring the economic contribution of cultural industries by UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics Handbook, published in 2012, Quebec, Canada.”