If there is a city in Indonesia where one could safely claim that the creative energies are perhaps the most abundant, then Bandung would be a prime example of it. The city thrives on the creative energies of her people, as apparent with creativity-based industry available all over the city in great numbers. Granted, not all of them sported out a good business sense and good survivability in the middle of tight competition, but nevertheless perhaps there is none a place more friendly to the powers of creativity in Indonesia other than Bandung.

And thus the name Bandung Creative City was born.

The city has been crowned the honor of acquiring the title since 2007,  when in Tokyo, Japan, Bandung was chosen as the pilot project city for the Eastern and South-eastern Asia country. The creative industry in this city covers a wide scope of products such as fashionable clothes, music, designs, and more, making Bandung a unique case of a city on a developing country that sustains a good portion of its economic activity on creativity-based industries.

This situation in particular is heavily influenced by the fact that the majority–around 60%–of Bandung’s citizens are comprised of young people under the age of 40, people that are still ripe with productivity. Bandung is also the home of many private and public universities, and that situation helped her to become city strongly empowered by educative and initiative minds ready to take matters into their own hands.

Amongst the kind of products born under the umbrella of creativity-based industries that are thriving in Bandung, the one that is most developed and successful most probably can be attributed to fashion and/or fashion-related products such as clothes, hats, shoes, various accessories, etc. In fact, these line of products are so successful that the term “Distro”, short for “Distribution Outlets”, has become something that is synonymous to the city itself.  A business concept that started its life as a form of self-expression for young people, Distro has quickly grown into a lucrative field that can reward its players with substantial results.

I, for one, am looking forward in witnessing with my own eyes whether Bandung can truly lives up to its name as a Creative City in the future.

Tags: Bandung, Bandung City, Bandung Creative City, BCC, Creativity
Categories: Bandung City

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 3:27 AM and is filed under Bandung City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.