By Express News Service HYDERABAD: After a top UNESCO official concluded her visit to Hyderabad recently, it has come to the fore that the city is in contention for being included in the international agency’s Creative Cities Network (UCCN). Sources have confirmed that in June this year, an application for inclusion in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, was sent by the State government. Hyderabad was looking to be included under the ‘gastronomy’ category. UNESCO India received a total of nine applications, of which it forwarded four, including Hyderabad, to its headquarters in Paris. On the condition of anonymity, a UNESCO official said that the results will be announced by UCCN Paris next month. Created in 2004, the UCCN was aimed at placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of developmental and cooperation plans at the local and international levels, respectively. Needless to say, if Hyderabad figures in the list, which already comprises Indian cities of Chennai and Jaipur, it would bolster its creative industries. As Express had reported earlier, the idea of including Hyderabad in UCCN was first discussed when the chief of UNESCO’s culture department and programme specialist, Junhi Han, visited the city in March 2019. While the officials dismissed these visits as personal in nature, a source told Express that UNESCO was conducting a research with an aim to find out the impact of urban development on age-old heritage structures in the city.

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