UNESCO Projects

Creativity 2030 | 5th International Forum in Beijing,
Focusing on 'AI + Culture' for Sustainable Development

In March 2026 Dr Natalia Grincheva participated at the Creativity 2030 · 5th International Forum, the first “AI + Culture” themed forum organized by the International Centre for Creativity and Sustainable Development (ICCSD) —a UNESCO Category 2 centre dedicated to advancing creative approaches to sustainable development. The forum gathered international experts to explore how AI can serve cultural diversity and social progress. Participating in a high-level panel on AI's Impact on Sustainable Development, Dr. Grincheva stressed that achieving balance between technological innovation and cultural integrity requires more than regulation; it demands a fundamental shift toward human-led, ethically grounded AI systems. Drawing on her leadership of a transdisciplinary research hub Culture Futures Lab, she advocated for cultivating digital literacy as the essential foundation for inclusive AI governance. Her call to de-center dominant data frameworks and empower diverse communities resonated with the Forum's mission to foster equitable global dialogue. By foregrounding collaborative, culturally aware approaches, her contributions underscored the vital role of education, institutional innovation, and cross-sector partnership in shaping a digital future where creativity and sustainability advance together.

Images Credits: © ICCSD Media Crew

Report for the UNESCO Institute of Statistics:
National Cultural Statistics Frameworks:
Comparative Case Studies of the USA, UK, South Korea, and Singapore

Comparative Case Studies of the USA, UK, South Korea, and Singapore

Dr Natalia Grincheva is leading a team of researchers from the USA, UK, South Korea and Singapore to work on the Report commissioned by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, originally designed as a capacity building resource for the International Workshop on Cultural Statistics, co-organized by the UN Statistics Division and China's National Bureau of Statistics in September 2025. The project responds to a critical global need: as culture gains recognition within the 2030 Agenda, national statistical systems require robust, comparable frameworks to measure culture's contribution to sustainable development.


The report aims to provide a comparative analysis of national cultural statistics frameworks across four diverse contexts—the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Singapore—selected for their globally influential cultural data systems and distinct governance philosophies. Through detailed case studies, the research develops a critical typology of archetypal approaches to cultural measurement, revealing how different governance structures, data sources, and primary metrics shape what becomes visible and valued in cultural policy. Moving beyond description, the report aims to deliver a practical diagnostic toolkit enabling policymakers worldwide to assess their own systems against criteria of robustness, viability, utility, and sustainability.

The International Workshop on Cultural Statistics, UN Statistics Division and China National Bureau of Statistics in Collaboration with UNESCO Institute for Statistics

Dr. Natalia Grincheva was a distinguished participant and contributor at the International Workshop on Cultural Statistics, a pivotal high-level forum convened in September 2025 in Kunming, China, by the UN Statistics Division and China's National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. The event assembled leading officials from national statistical offices and ministries of culture, researchers and practitioners in cultural policy and measurement, and technical experts in cultural data. Dr. Grincheva significantly enriched the Forum by presenting findings from the large-scale research project conducted for the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, Mapping Cultural Data: A Cross-Country Analysis, which offered a critical comparative study of cultural statistics frameworks across South Korea, Singapore, the UK, and the USA. Furthermore, Dr Grincheva shared her extensive expertise in digital cultures, delivering presentations on emerging frameworks for born-digital creative content, digital platform economies and statistics as well as on innovative approaches to measuring user engagement beyond quantitative metrics. Her contributions advocated for advanced mixed-methods and qualitative digital research strategies to comprehensively capture the full value chain of contemporary cultural production, consumption, circulation and preservation.

Video credits: © China National Bureau of Statistics.

20th Anniversary Celebration of the 2005 UNESCO Convention in Paris, France

At the UNESCO 2005 Convention's 20th-Anniversary Celebration in Paris, Dr. Natalia Grincheva contributed to the Panel "Equitable Access, Openness, and Balanced Exchanges of Cultural Goods and Services" by presenting her groundbreaking Hallyu Tracker application. Her presentation underscored the vital role of technology in promoting global cultural diversity by offering a powerful new way to understand the worldwide influence of the Korean Wave.
Dr. Grincheva's work is a direct outcome of her decade-long research into structural imbalances in global cultural flows. Driven by a deep interest in digital technologies and data storytelling, she has focused on creating cultural indicators that can measure the lasting, intangible value of cultural initiatives. This research led to the development of her award-winning digital tool, "Data To Power", a web-based application that empowers researchers to visualize and explore complex global cultural flows through dynamic, multi-layered mapping. As UNESCO celebrates two decades of advancing cultural diversity, Dr. Grincheva's work bridges the gap between digital innovation and cultural policy, offering data-driven insights into the worldwide influence of the Korean Wave. Her research empowers policymakers and cultural professionals to make informed decisions, ensuring more inclusive and equitable cultural exchanges.

Video credits: © UNESCO.

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Leading “The Impact of Digitization on Cultural Statistics” working group at the “Rethinking Cultural Measurement” UNESCO Workshop at the 2025 Culture Summit.

In April 2025, Dr Natalia Grincheva facilitated the "Impact of Digitalization" working group at the Rethinking Cultural Measurement workshop, a participatory public consultation organized by UNESCO and its Institute for Statistics in collaboration with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi at the Culture Summit. The session brought together international participants to examine how digital transformation is reshaping cultural statistics aggregation and analysis practices at a critical moment: the growing momentum to establish culture as a stand-alone goal in the post-2030 development agenda and the launch of UNESCO's 2025 Framework for Culture Statistics.The working group identified three fundamental challenges confronting cultural measurement in the digital age. First, the expanding scope and scale of cultural data creates both unprecedented opportunities and significant obstacles, as practitioners grapple with information overload, fragmented datasets, and a lack of standardized methodologies for cross-platform and cross-border comparison. Second, persistent digital divides exacerbate inequalities in data privacy, resource allocation, and infrastructure maturity, with participants from diverse global contexts highlighting how disparities in connectivity and institutional power shape who benefits from digital cultural infrastructure. Third, the working group critically examined the limits of "dataism"—the ideological privileging of quantitative metrics—arguing that purely numerical approaches fail to capture the intangible dimensions of cultural meaning, value, and lived experience.

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