Culture has a critical role in transforming localities into more attractive places to work and invest. Cultural activities and facilities significantly affect the development of the physical environment of cities. But what does it all mean for the local residents of the neighbourhoods? How do they feel or participate in cultural activities organized for them? The overall aim of this study has been to evaluate participation effect on the development of Riga’s neighbourhoods during the year of The European Capital of Culture. During the research, the authors have used the mixed research methodology. The qualitative analysis of the Riga 2014 programme has been done based on the qualitative interviews with the artistic team, project managers and entrepreneurs from Riga’s neighbourhoods; besides, a detailed analysis of Riga 2014 programme events has been performed. The main findings show that cultural life in the neighbourhoods is among the most important factors determining the satisfaction with life by the neighbourhoods’ inhabitants. Personalities, not infrastructure have a crucial importance in the development of neighbourhood cultural life. Cultural activities in neighbourhood should be carried out in close cooperation with the stakeholders from different sectors. This can bring to sustainable and long‑term effects.

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While sustainability is a much-researched issue, little has been written about the role of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) in implementing sustainable development, specifically in small cities. The authors pose the following questions: What is the interrelation between CCI practices and the four pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, cultural, and social) in small cities? What are the practices that CCIs use, and which they perceive as contributions to sustainable development? The authors use a single case study strategy, methods including a theoretical study, a quantitative pilot survey, a focus group discussion, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis. Overall, the article indicates that there is a varied and diverse repertoire of small- and large-scale practices carried out by CCIs in small cities in Latvia, and thus contributes to the existing scholarly literature by “teasing out” those practices. The study indicates that each of the practices may contribute to two or more sustainability pillars, thus they are analyzed in pairs to find out what traits are reflected in these practices. Notably, CCI entrepreneurs believe that sustainable development is important and that they contribute to it.

Abstract. The skills and knowledge of the owners and employees of cultural enterprises on economic use of financial resources do not guarantee valuable artistic results. Therefore, a substantiated question has arisen: how to evaluate management in enterprises with bad financial ratios and outstanding artistic indicators. The existing definitions of cultural management (Aageson, 2008; Hagoort, 2007;Klamer, 1999;Stam, 2006; Nordman, 2003) also do not provide precise suggestions for determining the most important indicators in the evaluation of cultural management. The question is how to evaluate management in cultural entrepreneurship by determining the most important indicators for a cultural enterprise's performance improvement. In order to define the goal of the stakeholders' (artists, clients, media, arts scholars, third parties providing funds, cooperation partners) engagement, it is necessary to analyse the area of an enterprise's activities, and in what way and by what kind of activities it is possible to engage the stakeholders. During the course of empirical research, it is planned to disclose, analyse and interpret the subjective reasons of pursuit. Although a numerical evaluation of stakeholders was obtained during the research and data analysis performed by Spearman's rho correlation calculations, the obtained results during the interpretation have not been generalised. The research results reveal the role of the cultural enterprise's stakeholders' engagement in the evaluation of management, point to the importance of the goals' analysis as well as the analysis of each stakeholder's engagement, and define the criteria for evaluating the activities in cultural entrepreneurship.