Culture for cities and regions

North Portugal: a regional strategy to support the creative sector

Last week ADDICT, the agency supporting Creative Industries in Portugal, hosted a Culture for cities and regions study visit on regional strategies to support the creative sector.

For more than a decade, culture has played a leading role in the economic development of Northern Portugal – with both Porto and Guimarães as European Capitals of Culture (respectively in 2001 and 2012), a committed approach to culture-led regeneration has been implemented. North Portga was the first region in Portugal to champion the creative industries.

The need for partnerships and the need to build a sense of community are two key conclusions from the visit. ADDICT is a non–profit association created in 2008 and currently with 100 members representing several sub-sectors of the creative industries. Its mission is to strengthen and deepen the clustering process of creative industries in the region by reaching out to market players with no tradition of dialogue and cooperation. Local stakeholders are very diverse and include companies, cultural institutions, art spaces, artists, universities, science parks, research centres and municipalities.

For more info have a look at this post from participants from Dundee! You can find the study visit documents and report here.