British Council is working with the Kuwait National Council for Culture Art and Letters to create a creative economy in the country.

Building up the creative economy sector - which specialise in the use of creative talent for commercial purposes - is an important part of Kuwait National Development Plan’s Seven Strategic Pillars and Objectives. That is, to develop a prosperous and diversified economy to reduce the country’s dependency on oil export revenues.

As part of  the work,   British Council partnered with a UK-based consultant to build a strategic framework on the creative economy that should enable Kuwait to continue to demonstrate their cultural leadership through various projects and grow the sector so it can support a growing sustainable creative economy.

A creative economy should protect and develop the country’s cultural strengths as well as deliver new high-growth businesses, high-skilled and highly productive jobs, The Creative Economy Framework also provides recommendations on how these sectors can offer spill-over benefits for culture, cultural heritage and the visitor economy, greater innovation in the wider economy, and help with the international competitiveness and positioning of Kuwait as a progressive country to invest and work in.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the British Council and the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters to support and strengthen the existing relationship between the UK and Kuwait with arts and culture at its epicentre.

The work in the creative economy is part of the British Council’s mission aims to promote the UK’s diverse culture, creativity and innovation overseas and through its local Kuwait office.

The Creative Economy work has three phases:

Phase One : September 2019 – October 2019

The mapping, researching and analysing of Kuwait’s creative economy, workshops, interviews and SWOT analysis will feed into the mapping of the framework used to inform phase two and three.

Phase Two : December 2019 – January 2020

Building on from the findings of phase one, in phase two a strategic road map will be developed, pilot projects that have started in March 2019 will be analysed and tested through workshops and meetings facilitated by NCALL.

Phase Three : December 2020 – March 2021

Phase three will build on from phase two, a collaborative framework for the creative economy will be developed, this will lead into a national vision and broad policy framework. Once created and set up, a series of capacity building workshops for the NCCAL will be delivered in 2020.