Cultural scene to undergo robust redevelopment

EASTERN SUBURB MEMORY, a former TV cathode tube factory in the east of Chengdu, is now a cultural park. CHEN QI / FOR CHINA DAILY

As a city with a history stretching back 3,000 years, Chengdu is rich in cultural creativity and is the birthplace of a great number of creative cultural companies.

The Station Three Quarters art block was opened on Sept 29 at the Jinzhan shopping center at Tianfu Square, the center of the city’s urban area. Covering 3,000 square meters, the block will incubate a range of creative cultural enterprises.

It currently has 31 studio offi ces that are off ered to creative cultural people and teams at very low rent. The venues mainly make and exhibit handcrafted artworks.

“We will provide creative people and teams with a professional and comprehensive incubation service, and we try to cultivate leading talents and enterprises in the cultural industry,” said Xie Min, investment promotion manager for Station Three Quarters.

He said the Jinzhan shopping center has specially established an incubation management organization to ensure support to the creative talents and teams.

“The successfully incubated programs will be moved into a grade A offi ce building for further development. They will also receive a special development fund,” Xie said.

A growing number of creative cultural parks similar to Station Three Quarters have been established in Chengdu in recent years. The best-known include Redstar 35, Blue Roof Art Center, Eastern Suburbs Memory, Ming Tang Creative Center, and Nongyuan International Art Village.

Since 2014, the city has held the annual Chengdu Creative Design Week, which encourages museums, galleries, creative cultural parks and art organizations to open to the public and hold creative design activities. This year, the event will be held in November.

During the 7th Chinese Museums and Relevant Products and Technologies Exposition held in Chengdu in September, the city signed an agreement with the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, under which the two organizations will build a nationallevel cultural museum creative industrial park.

The added value of Chengdu’s cultural industry reached 56.7 billion yuan ($8.4 billion) in 2015, which represented about 5 percent of its GDP.

Experts said the increasing number of international cultural activities and the fast development of the cultural creative parks will further help the city build into a cultural creative center in western China.

INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS visit Eastern Suburb Memory. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY