How creative are European cities?

The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (CCCM) shows how well the 168 selected cities in 30 European countries perform.

Performance is measured using 29 carefully selected indicators as well as qualitative data related to the

• ‘Cultural Vibrancy’,
• ‘Creative Economy’ and
• ‘Enabling Environment’.

The scores of these three measures are then aggregated in an overall C3 Index based on a set of weights designed together with experts in the field.

The CCCM’s accompanying online tool - now enriched with new interactive features - allows you to:

• browse quantitative and qualitative information to understand strengths and development opportunities for the 168 selected cities;
• compare the performance of peer cities (based on income level, population size or employment rate) in a mutual learning perspective;
• adapt weights to reflect local priorities and see how these changes affect the final cities' scores;
• simulate the impact of policy actions (e.g. increased number of cultural events) to build scenarios (new);
• create a new city entry to give any interested city the possibility to benchmark its performance (new).

Background:

Since the adoption of the first ‘European Agenda for Culture in a Globalising World’ (2007), culture has taken an increasingly prominent place in European Union policymaking.

However, mapping cultural and creative assets and measuring their value and impact in a systematic and comparable way across Europe remains a challenge, with no shared definitions or metrics, particularly at city level.

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has developed the 'Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor' in order to fill this information gap.

It provides a common evidence base on culture and creativity at city level to:

• Support policy makers in identifying strengths, benchmarking their city against peers and learning from them, and assessing the impact of their policies;
• Highlight and communicate the importance of culture and creativity in improving socio-economic perspectives and resilience;
• Inspire new research and approaches to studying the role of culture and creativity in cities.

It brings together data from a variety of public sources (such as Eurostat and the Eurobarometer) and experimental data (for example from TripAdvisor).

The Monitor is expected to be updated every two years in order to remain conceptually and statistically sound across countries, cities and time and capture cities' development. The next update is going to be in 2019.

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Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (CCCM)