Riga - European Capital of Culture 2014 candidate

goals proposedin riga’sapplication• Promote creativity and an innovative approach, highlightingthese as key catalysts in cultural development and the improvementof cultural processes, because culture as an instrument for the cultivationof creative skills and improvement of the individual is the mainprecondition for the birth of new ideas and improvement of the qualityof life and culture as an event and process of society.• Show the diversity of European culture and encourage interculturaldialogue, promoting the development of a quality, new communicationlevel between people in the Latvian and other Europeancountry cultural sector, societies in the civil sense, different generations,social groups and interest groups;• Promote dialogue and understanding between cultures and nations,promoting diversity of civil opinion and multiculturalism,thus enriching the European cultural space;• Accentuate the need to deepen the concept of developmentin the city administration context, supplementing it with a culturaldimension and underlining the fact that cultural development andcreative activity are significant factors that influence the quality oflife, welfare and sustainability of cities;• Highlight and present the interconnections between the cultural,educational and economic sectors, acknowledging that thesynergy of these fields develops an economy based on knowledge,highlighting the importance of the creative industry in theeconomy;• Implement Riga’s cultural development vision and popularise itin Europe, thus promoting the city’s intention to visibly demonstratethat an understanding of culture promotes human rights, sustainability,democratic participation and creates conditions for peace;• Fulfil Riga’s ambitions with a rapid and determined developmentof the cultural sector, bringing to life new cultural infrastructurefacilities in Riga’s urban landscape and developing the existing culturalinfrastructure.• Promote the principal of participation as the basis of culturaldevelopment, which would interweave and link civil responsibility,identity, creation, intercultural dialogue and festive atmosphere;• Underline the importance of local cultural development, becauseit furthers the democratic participation of society, multiplies socialcapital and balances current globalisation tendencies, highlightingthe importance of culture in a local context and promoting the rights ofall city inhabitants to culture and knowledge, discriminating no-one.16 17