The successive departure of several COD focal points (including 5 pillars in 2023!), and the desire of keeping alive the professional friendships developed over the years while she was the focal point for the Montreal designation, led Marie-Josée Lacroix to initiate a “COD_EX Club”. She launched a call on November 19, 2023 to those who had previously been networked as COD lead officers, to which everyone contacted, immediately responded with eagerness and enthusiasm. The need and desire to stay in touch was clearly shared.
The group has met twice to discuss expectations and define the purpose of such a club. Here are our first thoughts.
The COD_EX CLUB 😊 is intended primarily to bring together all people who have been involved in a UNESCO City of design since the creation of the UCCN in 2004, either as a focal point for their city or as promoters of cooperation projects. These people today represent an exceptional pool of international expertise who can act as a sounding board, play an advisory role, be guardians of a certain memory or exercise a constructive influence on the future of the Network.
This group is NOT a substitute for the designated COD point of contact in members cities.
For us, this grouping of ‘lifelong friends’ and professional colleagues is a simple way to formalise our relationship, an incentive to nourish communication between us or even cooperation around certain projects that we cherish. This initiative is also a lever to reiterate our commitment to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network’s mission.
A priori, we imagine a kind of informal association of “sages”, not too sages, to which everyone could join (or leave) on a voluntary and individual basis. As members no longer represent their institution or employer, it allows for more freedom of opinion, expression and action, which could help our successors and the active members and support certain of their initiatives.
For those who want to draw on our knowledge and experiences, some ways that the COD_EX group can support our successors, the current COD network and its coordinators, include:
- Advising candidate and new cities on launching their COD efforts- sharing both expertise and experiences (successes, failures, challenges);
- Mentoring cities around how to tap into the network, what role to play as a smaller city;
- Supporting academic partnerships in their cities;
- Being a platform for discussion and for making cross-clusters connections (literature, film, crafts, gastronomy etc.)
- Facilitating relationships with other UNESCO designations – heritage, learning, etc.
- Collaborating on a best-practices review of the evaluation of candidate COD applications.
We may no longer be ambassadors of our cities, but we can always be ambassadors of the COD!
We are now eager to know from the COD active members IF&HOW the COD_EX Club can be useful and meaningful to you?