Tallinn plans to make culture the corner stone of its development program. By emphasizing and improving its creative base, the program hopes to encourage and attract interest from the far corners of the European community with its generous appetite for all things cultural.

Tallinn's leaders envisage being the cultural capital as one part of a far reaching process of transforming urban spaces into cultural centres and introducing Estonian culture to the rest of Europe while helping Estonians create a new European identity.

The economic benefits of being the cultural capital will extend outward across the whole of Estonia, improving the nation's standard of living, political influence and national security.

Within the framework of the cultural capital, Tallinn hopes to create and implement innovative approaches to both urban and environmental design, leaning heavily on the intellectual resources and cooperation of partners arriving from all over Europe. In this way, Tallinn hopes to find the solutions it needs to solve its unique challenges in the 21st century.

Source: Tallinn Capital of Culture 2011 Candidature Book: Everlasting Fairytale