The UNESCO Creative City is a city that pursues sustainable development by solving the city’s challenges based on cultural assets and creativity. Jinju City has changed its major policies from 2017 to regard culture as one of the four pillars of city administration along with society, economy, and environment.
After being selected as a UNESCO Creative City, four programs were offered to achieve the objectives of the Network. The first was the Jinju Folk Art/Traditional Crafts Biennale, the second, the Jinju Artists in Residence, and the third, the publication of the International Journal of Crafts and Folk Arts. In addition, the fourth program focused on making efforts to participate in international network activities, to share knowledge, experiences, and practices with other cities.
- The Jinju Artist in Residence program aims to internationalize the cultural assets of Jinju by inviting foreign artists to stay in Jinju for a month and collaborate with artists of Jinju. This project can be said to have sufficiently achieved the goal of expanding cultural exchange and cultural diversity among the member citites of subnetwork.
- The Jinju International Folk Arts Biennale is an event held every other year along with the Jinju Traditional Crafts Biennale. In 2022 the Folk Arts Biennale was held for about seven days from October 15th to the 22nd. This year’s event, held under the theme of “Diversity: The Foundation of Creativity,” featured folk arts troupes from 9 creative cities.
- The 2nd Jinju Traditional Craft Biennale had been held for about 40 days from November 1 to December 10, 2023, under the theme of “Today’s Craft, Tomorrow’s Tradition,” at the Jinju Station Vehicle Maintenance Depot and the Old Jinju Station. The biennial events have contributed to cultural exchanges among creative cities, helped realize the UCCN mission of cultural diversity, and provided opportunities for artists, especially from developing countries, to enter the international arena.
- Jinju has been publishing the International Journal of Craft and Folk Arts every year from 2020 to 2023. The journal seeks to share knowledge, experiences, and practices of UCCN member cities in the field of crafts and folk art.
- The 2022 UNESCO Creative Cities Network Crafts and Folk Art Subnetwork Annual Meeting was held for 2 nights and 3 days from October 19th to 21st at Jinju Knowledge Industry Center in Jinju city. 51 focal points or representatives (25 offline, 26 online) from 30 of the 59 member cities of the Crafts and Folk Arts Creative Cities Subnetwork (11 offline, 19 online) participated. The purpose of this meeting was reporting the progress of various committee activities within the subnetwork and activating friendship and exchange among the subnetwork cities.
