While culture and creativity have proven to be important for people in order to deal with the confinement measures, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a disastrous impact on the cultural sector itself. With a focus on cities, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) dove into these two sides of the same coin: How has the coronavirus emergency affected European cities particularly active in promoting culture and creativity? How are they responding to the pandemic effects?
To answer these questions, JRC carried out three main actions: 1) they have surveyed almost 200 cities in 30 European countries to explore the effects of COVID-19 on the cultural and creative sectors; 2) they gathered more than 350 digital cultural initiatives in European cities; and 3) they used pre-COVID-19 evidence from the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor to identify the potentially most exposed cities to the socio-economic effects of the pandemic.
This last action resulted in the report European Cultural and Creative Cities in COVID-19 times (2020), which highlights the vulnerability of cultural jobs in the EU-27. Besides identifying the most exposed cities, it also looks at inspirational practices and policies induced by the crisis. The report will be officially released during the webinar European Cultural and Creative Cities in post COVID-19 times: bouncing forward on Tuesday July 7th.
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