In order to enrich people's cultural life and to broaden their cultural horizons, the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R. Government organizes this program and invites celebrities from the areas of literature, arts and culture to communicate with the public or to conduct lectures. With this initiative, the Cultural Affairs Bureau aims to create opportunities for the citizens of Macao, so that they can learn from the views of these great masters and have a further insight into the current culture and arts. We hope that, through the exchange of experiences and the sharing of knowledge, we can foster greater intellectual pluralism, as well as a more international perspective of the topics discussed, thus enriching the local culture and promoting its development with renewed vigor and creativity.

Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. He innovated the concept of the Creative City in the late 1980's. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organizations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities. The notion has become a global movement and changed the way cities thought about their capabilities and resources.

Charles Landry works with cities around the world to help them make the most of their potential. He is widely acclaimed as a speaker, author and innovator. He facilitates complex urban change projects. Acting as a critical friend, Charles works closely with decision makers and local leaders helping to find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying innovation and tradition, balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, or local distinctiveness and a global orientation. Charles has worked and given talks in over sixty countries and helped shift how we assess and harness possibilities in reinventing our cities. His Creative City Index is a powerful tool to measure the creative eco-system of places. 

Charles has written over a dozen books most recently The Digitized City which explores crucial issues we face as we enter the urban age. His book The Art of City Making was recently voted the second best book on cities ever written by the planning website Planetizen. Other books cover the senses of the city, interculturalism and culture and commerce.

"Cultural creativity" and "creative economy" are two brand new concepts in recent years that help cities revive and regain economic competitiveness. Ambitious places recognize that their context and operating conditions have changed dramatically. They conclude that a business as usual approach will not get them to where they want and need to be. They understand that the resources and assets or attitudes and attributes that made them great and successful in the past may hinder them in the future.

By sharing the successful cases in famous cultural cities across the world, Charles will prove in the lecture that ambition and creativity are the keys to establish a creative city, in addition to cultural events, imagination and creativity that he advocates for urban change. Charles will lead you to think from a new perspective on how to establish a creative, energetic and livable city.