The VII International Cultural Forum held in Ulyanovsk (Russian Federation) on 14 and 15 September on the theme “Culture and Business: Creative Capital of Modern City” witnessed the participation of high-level representatives, including the Governor of the Ulyanovsk region, heads of UNESCO Creative Cities Granada (Spain) and Heidelberg (Germany), educational institutions, enterprises, mass media, artists and cultural professionals. The Forum provided an opportunity to gather leading specialists in culture and creativity, as well as cultural policy to come together to discuss sector’s trends and find innovative solutions. The Forum consisted of panel discussions, lectures, artistic performances and exhibitions.

The key outcomes of the Forum are related to:

• Address the challenges faced by local booksellers in Spain and Russia by providing them more support for development;
• Follow-up the UNESCO City of Literature Programme implemented in Heidelberg that has multiplying opportunities to establish communication with local communities and has resulted in the creation of new association working towards the programme implementation;
• Build more cooperation between the programme’s Directorate at the Department of Culture and other sectoral bodies of local authorities in the City of Ulyanovsk in order to attract more investments for literature-related events, infrastructural and urban solutions, tourist sites with cultural dimension, book publishing and bookselling; and
• Participate even more actively in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, which provides unique opportunities for exchanging worldwide experience and information, as well as significantly assists in growth of the city’s economy.