UNESCO's City of Literature programme is part of the wider Creative Cities Network.
The Network was launched in 2004, and now has member cities in seven creative fields. The other creative fields are: Crafts and Folk Arts, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Media Arts, and Music. [1]
To be approved as a City of Literature, cities need to meet a number of criteria set by UNESCO. [2]
Designated UNESCO Cities of Literature share similar characteristics:
Cities submit bids to UNESCO to be designated a City of Literature. The designations are monitored and reviewed every four years by UNESCO.
In 2004, Edinburgh became the first literary city. It hosts the annual International Book Festival and has its own poet laureate—the Makar. [3] [4]
Ljubljana runs their Library Under the Treetops at various locations across the city, including Tivoli City Park and Zvezda Park. These sites offer a selection of book genres and several domestic and foreign newspapers and magazines. [5]
Manchester is home to the "world-class" Central Library and the "historic gems" of The Portico, John Rylands, and Chetham's. [6]
Melbourne's is home to Australia's oldest public library State Library of Victoria, the Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas The Wheeler Centre and was home to the world's biggest book shop Cole's Book Arcade, opened at the turn of the twentieth century.
Prague's "great intellectual and creative resources," includes the book design, illustration, typography, and graphic design fields. It also has the National Library of the Czech Republic among over 200 libraries, one of Europe's highest concentrations of bookshops, and the Prague Writers' Festival. [7]
Libraries in other literary cities, include: Braidense National Library in Milan, Heidelberg University Library, and the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. [8] [9] [10]
Dunedin is the "Edinburgh of the South", and home to New Zealand's oldest university. Durban is "fun-loving." [11] [12]
Montevideo is a "vibrant, eclectic place" and Québec City is a "gorgeous, seductive place." [13] [14]
11 countries have multiple Cities of Literature; 10 of them have two, while the United Kingdom has five.
The Cities of Literature are:
A literary festival, also known as a book festival or writers' festival, is a regular gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis in a particular city. A literary festival usually features a variety of presentations and readings by authors, as well as other events, delivered over a period of several days, with the primary objectives of promoting the authors' books and fostering a love of literature and writing.
Durban is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South Africa, on the Natal Bay of the Indian Ocean, Durban is South Africa's busiest port and was formerly named Port Natal. North of the harbour and city centre lies the mouth of the Umgeni River; the flat city centre rises to the hills of the Berea on the west; and to the south, running along the coast, is the Bluff. Durban is the seat of the larger eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which spans an area of 2,556 km2 (987 sq mi) and had a population of 4.2 million in 2022, making the metropolitan population one of Africa's largest on the Indian Ocean. Within the city limits, Durban's population was 595,061 in 2011. The city has a humid subtropical climate, with hot, wet summers and mild, dry winters.
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The city has a rich Māori, Scottish, and Chinese heritage.
William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is an India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
William Manhire is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate (1997–1998). He founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, founded the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2001, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career. Many of New Zealand's leading writers graduated from his courses at Victoria. He has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2018.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
The Scottish Poetry Library is a public library specialising in Scottish poetry. Since 1999, the library has been based at 5 Crichton's Close, just off the Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town.
f*INK Weekly Entertainment Guide was a free weekly guide owned by Martin Kean and Caroline McCaw. It was published each Wednesday from February to December, from 1996-2009 in Dunedin, New Zealand. The aim of the guide was to provide free information about events to the local community using cheap one-colour printing but with a distinctive design style. Part of f*INK's mission was support of and collaboration with artist networks, bands and musicians, including those that grew out of the Dunedin sound.
UNESCO's City of Film project is part of the wider Creative Cities Network.
The Wheeler Centre, originally Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas, is a literary and publishing centre founded as part of Melbourne's bid to be a Unesco Creative City of Literature, which designation it earned in 2008. It is named after its patrons, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the Lonely Planet travel guides.
Peter John Olds was a New Zealand poet from Dunedin. He was regarded as being a significant contributor within New Zealand literary circles, in particular, having an influence with younger poets in the 1970s. Olds held the University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship and was the inaugural winner of the Janet Frame Literary Award. During the 1970s he spent time in the community of Jerusalem with James K Baxter.
Book fairs and literary festivals are held throughout South Africa each year to promote literacy among children and adults. A country's literacy rate is often a key social indicator of development. In 2005, UNESCO Institute for Statistics reported a literacy rate of 94.37% among the population aged 15 years and older. The literacy rate among the male population in this age group was 95.4% and 93.41 for female counterparts. According to Statistics South Africa, functional illiteracy among those aged 20 years or older, was recorded at 15.4% in 2005. This has improved from 2002's 27.3%. Women are more likely to be functionally illiterate across all age groups, apart from those aged between 20 and 39 years old.
Melbourne City of Literature is a City of Literature located in Victoria, Australia, as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It was designated by UNESCO in 2008 as the second City of Literature, after Edinburgh. In 2014, the Melbourne City of Literature Office was established, directed by David Ryding. The Office is hosted at the Wheeler Centre and is dedicated to supporting Melbourne as a City of Literature through one-off programs and projects, partnerships with the literary sector, and international exchanges with other UNESCO Cities of Literature.
Kraków UNESCO City of Literature is a City of Literature located in Kraków, Poland, as a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Kraków joined the UCCN on 21 October 2013 as the first Slavic and second non-English speaking city. Kraków's main objective as a UNESCO City of Literature is to develop and implement a program promoting literary heritage, popularize reading among its residents, and support the local book market. Kraków UNESCO City of Literature also functions as a coordinator for the Cities of Literature and a member of the UCCN Steering Committee.
City of Music is a designation given by UNESCO to a number of cities around the world "that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development", to promote cooperation among them and to help establish further music-related activities in the cities. The network is a sub-network of the wider UNESCO Creative Cities Network, or UCCN. The UCCN launched in 2004, and has member cities in seven creative fields. The other fields are: Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, and Media Arts.
David Howard is a New Zealand poet, writer and editor. His works have been widely published and translated into a variety of European languages. Howard was the co-founder of the literary magazine takahē in 1989 and the Canterbury Poets Collective in 1990. In New Zealand he held the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in Dunedin in 2013, the Otago Wallace Residency, in Auckland in 2014, and the Ursula Bethell Residency in Christchurch, in 2016. In more recent years he has been the recipient of a number of UNESCO City of Literature Residencies.
UNESCO's Design Cities project is part of the wider Creative Cities Network. The Network launched in 2004, and has member cities in seven creative fields. The other fields are: Crafts and Folk Art, Music, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, and Media Arts.
UNESCO's City of Gastronomy project is part of the wider Creative Cities Network. The Network was launched in 2004, and organizes member cities into seven creative fields: Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts, and Music.
The Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival is a literary festival held in Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand. Since its inception in 2014, there have been in total six festivals, including a special Celtic Noir event in 2019. The event is based mainly at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery but utilises Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, the Otago Pioneer Women's Memorial Hall, the Dunedin Central Library and in 2021 the central live music venue Dog with Two Tails. Festival events include talks, book launches, workshops, a storytrain or storybus, and in some years the unveiling of a new plaque on the Dunedin Writers' Walk.
