Catherine Cullen

Catherine Cullen was Deputy Mayor for Culture for the City of Lille, France, from 2001 to 2014. In 2008, she also became councillor in charge of Culture for the Métropole Européenne de Lille (MEL). For over ten years she was a board member of the Culture Committee of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), its President for three years (2012-2015), and she is presently its Special Advisor on Culture in Sustainable Cities. She is also an independent international consultant in culture and sustainable development, a subject she teaches at the Political Science Institute of Lille.
 

Culture is crucial to urban transformation, both as a driver and an enabler of a sustainable human development. Cities, with their capacity to implement effective policymaking, rely more and more on cultural responses to tackle difficulties in an integrated way. Culture is essentially about human beings: who they are, where they come from, how they use their creativity and imagination (past, present and future), and how and why they interact with others.