Creative Cities is an international project designed and managed by the British Council. It shares experience across Europe on the ways in which creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation can help to improve people’s lives – making cities better places to live, work and play.

National and local government express in their policy papers that they are interested in finding ways to support and project Moscow as a positive place, promote greater self-sufficiency and innovation among its residents and workers, enable streams of revenue from sources other than the energy sector to initiate more sustainable development and use of urban spaces and places.

Those aspirations link to an emerging understanding of the value that small and medium-sized enterprises have to the long-term competitiveness of the Russian economy.

We feel that the Creative Cities project can make a valuable contribution to support Moscow in reaching it’s goals in several ways:

• the project will provide opportunities for Moscow stakeholders in the process to share their experience, what has been learned and what has been achieved and discuss common challenges with their European counterparts;
• through the project the British Council will provide innovators with professional, personal and social development opportunities that build their capacity to make changes to improve quality of life in cities;
• the project will encourage a widened participation in innovation and creativity, and collaboration between arts, education, business and society focused professions.

The project consists of three elements:

1) Future City Game – a team-based process designed to create new thinking and actions to improve the quality of life in cities.

2) Urban Ideas Bakery – a method for young professionals to work together to develop and put into practice solutions to urban challenges across Europe and implement ideas generated during Future City Games.

3) Exploratory Activities – a forum for ongoing debates on the role that creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation play in urban development, together with practical examples of creative events developed by and for people living in cities.