How Uzbekistan’s young generation is changing the face of its creative economy

Tashkent, Uzbekistan CNN  —  A landlocked country in the heart of Central Asia, Uzbekistan has long been fueled by agriculture and manufacturing. But a growing economy and younger population are leading to an expansion of the country’s creative industries. The government has been investing heavily in a series of ambitious arts and architecture projects in recent years to promote Uzbek art on a world stage, with the new State Art Museum in Tashkent set to become Central Asia’s largest exhibition space. Odil Mukhamedov, 26, saw an opportunity to help build the sector when he founded creative community Moc in 2019. It came about when he realized there were no local platforms to share ideas and advocate for artists. “We started to bring together every creative person we knew: artists, musicians, designers, architects,” he told CNN. “The community started to expand and then we started to understand that the potential of creative people in Uzbekistan is very huge.”