Editorial | Promote cultural exports

Jamaica in the midst of a month-long celebration of reggae, a music developed in the island, which has become, as Olivia Grange, the entertainment and culture minister, put it, “an important force in global culture”.

This year’s celebration, Ms Grange mused, is taking place against the backdrop of last October’s Category-5 hurricane that caused widespread destruction to the island’s western region. In some instances, entire communities were obliterated. Tens of thousands of people are struggling to put their lives back together.

“In all of this, it falls to our composers, our songwriters, singers, players of instruments and to our sound men, to use their beautiful and powerful music to bring us all together,” Ms Grange said. “Our reggae music is therapy, we turn to this in good times and bad times. The rhythm, our rhythm, and the lyrics provide relief and inspiration.”

Reggae, surely, is all of what Ms Grange said it is. But it is also a big, if not well-structured economic enterprise, with the potential, like the rest of Jamaica’s cultural and creative industries, to become even bigger, and more important, to the national economy, including as exports.

This issue assumes greater relevance in the context of the emerging international environment in which powerful countries, led by the United States, are building protective tariff barriers around their markets and disrupting existing global supply chains.

Small and developing economies, like Jamaica’s, will have an even harder time breaking through the emerging trade ramparts, which makes it more important that they are structured, deliberate and innovative in their approaches.

It is against that backdrop that The Gleaner welcomes the government’s recent publication of a greenpaper on culture, and specifically, its renewed commitment to foster growth of the creative sectors of the economy, including with supportive legislation.

“The proposed Jamaica Arts, Culture and Creative Economy Act will be a significant addition to the legislative framework, serving to establish the National Culture and Creative Industries Committee in law and formalising the administration of the arts, culture and the creative economy sector,” the greenpaper says.

ROBUST PUBLIC DISCUSSION

Both the greenpaper and the proposed bill must be subject to robust public discussion to ensure that the unintended consequence of a supposed supportive infrastructure is not the State moving beyond legitimate regulatory parameters and attempting to become the overarching arbiter of culture, or the expression thereof.

But even ahead of these developments there is much that, and should be done, to economically leverage Jamaica’s popular culture and identity.

Indeed, for a small island Jamaica possesses an iconic brand, built substantially by the revolutionary ethos of some of reggae’s towering figures and the cultural insurgency of its dancehall off-shoots. The island’s outsized performance in global track and field athletics, too, has helped to establish a perception of Jamaican exceptionalism, with which many people around the world wish to be associated.

Put another way, Jamaica’s culture is already a significant global commodity. But it can become even bigger, with fewer constraints to its growth from cross-border barriers, often faced by the hard products of visible trade.

But despite decades of Jamaica’s engagement with the global cultural market, there is limited hard data on the value of exports or the contribution of the cultural industries to the domestic economy.

There are two main reasons for this. One is that the cultural entrepreneurs, especially in the music side of the industry, have largely been suspicious of the formal economic system and have therefore preferred to be aloof from it. And even those who engage the formal economy tend to lack the knowledge or skills to navigate its intricacies.

Indeed, this weakness was captured in a 2020 report on the island’s cultural and creative industries (CCI) commissioned by the British Council and the Jamaica Business Development Corporation.

“A lack of business skills was identified as a barrier to growth and sustainability by CCI entrepreneurs in Jamaica,” the report noted. “As the sector is comprised of many freelancers, artist entrepreneurs and micro enterprises, business skills such as financing, product pricing and negotiations are crucial.”

AFFORDABILITY

However, even where there was a willingness to obtain the relevant capacity, “affordability was the biggest barrier for survey respondents in obtaining training and education to advance skills”.

This helps to shape perception of cultural sectors and attitude towards them, as others that exist outside the normal framework of commerce.

While the British Council/JBDC analysis estimates that the cultural sector accounts for 5.2 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP and three per cent of employment there is no firm disaggregated data. Nor does anyone have a good handle of what Jamaican artistes earn abroad from music or other forms of entertainment or cultural exports.

Such information, largely available for other sectors, is vital if the entertainment and cultural sectors are to function as full members of the formal economy. The government data agencies must get to it.

At the same time, the government should aggressively promote, and support short cultural entrepreneurship training programmes to support the degree programmes now being offered by universities. It should also encourage Jamaican entertainers and artistes to take fuller advantage of access to the British and European markets provided under trade agreements with the UK and the European Union.

A structured creative industries sector that exports its services is good for Jamaica.