Big City, Big Ideas: Cities, Museums, and Soft Power

Museums are the sleeping giants of cities - fast becoming a major urban force, helping cities to attract people and investment, and address challenges such as inequality, social exclusion and sustainability. This is the Big Idea from internationally renowned cultural planners Gail Lord and Ngaire Blankenberg, in their new book Cities, Museums and Soft Power. In this presentation, they discuss how and why museums and cities can work together to activate their soft power - influence through attraction, persuasion and agenda-setting.

• Museums occupy (and create) some of the most prestigious real estate in the city;
• They are city place-makers;
• They are public and trusted spaces, attracting and bridging diverse people around common interests.

In their talk, Lord and Blankenberg also touched on the soft power opportunities for Toronto, a city that hovers at the edge of global leadership.