Participants at the fifth Creative Central Asia Networking Meeting held in Tashkent in March 2024.

5th Networking Meeting of Experts from the Creative Industries in Central Asia

The 5th Creative Central Asia (CCA) Networking Meeting was held in Tashkent from 11 to 15 March 2024 in partnership with the Arts and Culture Development Foundation of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Exploring one of the sub-themes of the official programme of the World Conference on Creative Economy – taking place from 2 to 4 October 2024 in Tashkent –  the programme of the 5th CCA Networking Meeting was dedicated to the theme of Interdisciplinary Creative Cities.

The event was attended by 40 professionals from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – including founders of creative hubs, clusters, cultural and art centres, leaders of professional associations and university programmes, creative producers, managers of online platforms and cross-disciplinary projects (festivals, labs, etc.).

Speakers

The international speakers were:

  • Gail Caig, an international creative industries policy and strategic development expert from the UK
  • Jon Zeff, lead advisor to the UK Creative Industries Council and chair of the Advisory Board of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC)
  • Elene Toidze, co-founder, and director of the Alliance of Creative Clusters of Georgia.

Strategic objective

The strategic objective was to help participants identify intermediary platforms and key actors in their sector, city and country, and to assess the potential of creative cities in Central Asia.

Through group exercises, participants conducted a rapid mapping of creative platforms in their cities and presented pilot Google maps of five creative cities in the region: Tashkent, Samarkand, Almaty, Astana and Bishkek.

The aim of the exercise was to map out the industry-specific, interdisciplinary and backbone connecting sites for the creative industries, making them visible not only to local and international colleagues, but also to the city’s residents.

Download the meeting report in the ‘Downloads’ section below.

View photos taken at the event.