Riga - European Capital of Culture 2014 candidate

• Latvia has strong informal social networks (family, friends,acquaintances). Taking into account the high level of trust in thesenetworks, they can be used as a significant resource for the promotionof forms of creative participation, and the public bringingto life of these forms in a new format that is beneficial for developmentof the city and society.• Global economic tendencies create a need to promote globalcooperation and Riga, as the most significant Baltic transit point,can serve as an excellent bridge of global cooperation betweensimilarly orientated creative groups and individuals elsewhere inEurope and the world.• With the implementation of the “Mobile Centre” principle, Riga,as European Capital of Culture 2014, becomes a kind of a Greekagora, where the most diverse scale of interaction of cultural ideasand exchange of thoughts takes place. The new cultural infrastructurefacilities (the National Library and the Contemporary ArtMuseum), construction of which has already begun, will becomea part of European and global information circulation processes,making Riga the location for new ideas, testimony of excellence,developing types of cooperation forms that would not be possiblewithout these facilities.26 27