Singing with Piaf, designing with AI: a journey through creative cities

The conference provided a unique opportunity to gain new ideas, thanks to inspiring practical examples from other UNESCO Creative Cities. Some examples:

• In Potsdam (UNESCO City of Film) brengt het project “Digital Resurrection of Cultural Heritage” historische kostuums op innovatieve wijze tot leven met behulp van generatieve AI en 3D-scans. Zo wordt erfgoed buiten het museumcontext visueel aantrekkelijk gemaakt, en ontstaan er nieuwe mogelijkheden voor mode, branding en stedelijke identiteit. Watch the video here.
  
• Bogotá (UNESCO City of Music) uses human-centred AI (Human-Centred AI) for an inclusive cultural policy. By processing neighbourhood analyses and interviews with AI, data are connected to local stories. In the process, ethics, participation and human control are central. 
  
• In Whanganui (UNESCO City of Design) the ‘AI Biz Café’ initiative brings people together in an accessible café atmosphere to discover new business opportunities using AI. This creates creative projects that start from the entire community.  Visit the website here.
  
• Cape Town (UNESCO City of Design) focuses heavily on job creation within the creative and cultural sector to boost the economy. This is done through training, work workshops, growth tools, logistical support and sales platforms for creative entrepreneurs.

Cultural experiences were also given a place at the conference, with AI as a creative partner. Musician Benoît Carré gave an impressive performance where he sang live, while voices could be heard through loudspeakers and iconic singers like Dalida and Édith Piaf appeared on the screen.

The conference saw the participation of 500 representatives from 200 UNESCO Creative Cities across the seven domains: design, gastronomy, literature, crafts, film, music and media arts. The event also provided opportunities to discuss deeper collaborations with the more than 20 UNESCO Cities of Design present. The future looks promising for the city and region of Kortrijk:

• We gathered strong examples of cities applying design thinking in social services.
• Possible cooperation with other European design cities is on the horizon.
• The cities of Como and Bandung showed interest in jointly setting up a project in Kortrijk this autumn.
• Conversely, we looked at the possibilities for a Kortrijk presence at the Bilbao-Bizkaia Design Week in November.

To be continued!

Participating UNESCO Cities of Design included: Baku, Bandung, Beijing, Berlin, Bilbao, Brasilia, Cape Town, Chiang Rai, Covilhã, Doha, Dundee, Graz, (India), Kobe, Kolding, Kortrijk, Nagoya, Querétaro, Saint-Étienne, Shanghai, Valencia and Wuhan.