Cultural mapping in Khazakhstan

Andy was a member of an expert group organised by the British Council to advise the City of Astana (the capital city), and Khazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan on techniques and approaches to measuring the scale of the cultural economy, and developing Creative Economy Leadership for Central Asia.  Based on his experience with the UK DCMS, and with UNESCO (for whom he drafted the framework for cultural statistics), and UNCTAD (he has drafted all versions of the Creative Economy report) Andy outlined how it could be possible to use existing census sources to develop a foundation mapping. A large team including John Newbigin (Chair of Creative England), Martin Smith (ingenious Group), Jill Miller (Glasgow City Chair of Cultural Services), and Andrea Stark (Director of Employment, Culture and Skills, Islington)and Gerald Lidstone (Goldsmiths) and many others gave the benefit of their knowledge to an eager group of regional policy makers and practitioners.

Andy is now working with Gumilyev Eurasian University and the Kazakh-British Technical University Business School to develop the practical methodology to produce the first cultural mapping ever done in the region.

The picture shows a beautiful, but very cold, downtown Astana. The cover picture is the the viewing tower.

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