East Asia is vital to the UK’s economy, with an aggregate gross domestic product double that of India and China combined. We also face critical challenges; to support positive social change in Burma and intercultural dialogue with every country in the region, from Indonesia to Japan. With vibrant English teaching and examination services, our task now is to engage emerging leaders with the UK to tackle regional and global priorities in education, creative cities and climate security.

In 2007 we launched Creative Cities, a new three-year, £2 million programme to support the development of creative and open cities with successful knowledge economies in 11 countries in East Asia, and in the UK.

Creative Cities draws on the UK’s reputation as a successful knowledge economy built on a network of creative urban population centres. The programme focuses on four broad themes: working with artists and designers to reimagine our cities; promoting accessibility and participation; transforming public spaces; and supporting creative entrepreneurs.

Working with D-Fuse, a collective of London-based artists, we developed Surface, a ground-breaking, pan-East Asian audio-visual work that explores how artists are both influenced by, and can help shape, cities, by the use of digital and other emergent technologies. In each city we create a unique event, which captures the essence of its urban expansion. In addition to the performance, we host a debate on how creative talents shape our cities and we screen an innovative moving image work – Graphic Cities – curated by onedotzero, a London-based production company.

We launched our accessibility and participation programme at an international forum on interculturalism and the arts in Melbourne in association with the Australia Council for the Arts. London 2012 World Cultural Festival leader Keith Khan shared his vision of diversity with delegates from five countries who will develop this area of work. The initial focus of this programme will be on the city leader’s role in promoting inclusion and the role of cultural organisations in promoting wider participation in the arts and creative industries.

We launched a two-year exploration into transforming public spaces asking UnitedVisualArtists, to work in Tokyo. Their installation, Content, launched JapanUK 2008, a year-long celebration of the creative, contemporary and collaborative aspects of Japan and the UK. In the first three months, more than 100,000 people participated at events and online.

To strengthen creative entrepreneurship we provided professional development support for 1,000 outstanding young creative entrepreneurs and established new links between leading policy-makers across the region. In addition we supported creative industries’ mapping exercises in Thailand and Indonesia, helping their governments create the right policy frameworks to let these grow.

As a result of the Creative Cities programme the UK is now perceived by city leaders across East Asia as the partner of choice for their creative city strategies.