SOMEWHERE in the decades between my youthfully exuberant expectation that changes could take place overnight in our local cultural and creative industries and my more mature realisation that changes would not take place overnight, no changes have taken place. Certainly due to budget constraints, cuts, and a poor economy, harnessing the power of the creative industries has not been a priority in a country where more pressing social needs must be attended to first.

But that story hasn’t changed in the last 10 years — minimal economic growth in the formal economy, injustice, unemployment, violence, unrest and infrastructural shortcomings prevail. Meanwhile globally, according to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, an increase in the revenue generated from global exports of creative industry goods and services went from US$267 billion to US$592 billion in a six-year period.

We have had a National Cultural Policy since 2003 which promised to point us “Towards Jamaica the Cultural Superstate” and which we have tweaked, presented and revised ad nauseam until it became a part of our Vision 2030. If only we had made the commitment to the promotion of our cultural industries and the potential of their contributing to the overall quality of life in Jamaica and its attractiveness as a place to live, work and invest, then we may have been able to produce our way out of our chronic economic crisis.

In June of 2006, I wrote a column headlined ‘And what of the arts?’, in which I lamented the fact that little of then leader of the opposition Bruce Golding’s broad vision for Jamaica, articulated at the Jamaica Labour Party’s 63rd Annual Conference, dealt with support of the arts. Except for one small item in his tourism proposal: “We must expand our craft industry through the training and provision of facilities to ensure a greater spread of the benefits of tourist expenditure.” There was nothing about the JLP’s manifesto at the time that suggested their government would significantly support the arts in Jamaica.

By the end of 2007, the Government changed and it was not until November of 2011, close to the end of his time in office, that the then Prime Minister Bruce Golding came to the view that Jamaica’s cultural industries represented a tremendous reservoir of potential that could help the country to move forward.

In declaring open the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Caribbean American Art Exhibition at the IDB art gallery in Washington, DC, the prime minister said, “If you look at how world trade is moving from product to services and to more exotic areas of endeavours, the creative industries represent one important area that we will now have to pay more attention to.”

In May 2007, in making her contribution in the 2007/08 Budget Debate in the House, the prime minister, the Most Honourable Portia Simpson Miller, pointed out that, “cultural industries represent Jamaica’s natural competitive advantage” and announced that a new Cultural Industries Council would replace the existing Entertainment Advisory Board in the Ministry of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture “with immediate effect”, which would position Jamaica to tap into “one of the largest industries in the world”.

The council, “in recognition that we just have to take a serious and focused business approach to fully maximise our natural talent and creativity”, would formulate plans to establish marketing and product development for the cultural industries; develop a comprehensive cultural industries policy; establish and manage a Cultural Industries Development Fund and commission a Cultural Industries Labour Market Survey.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that no such survey has been undertaken. Without the hard data on our cultural industries and their contribution to the Jamaican economy, the Government lacks justification for the financial support that the industry requires.

In June 2012, it was announced by Prime Minister the Most Honourable Portia Simpson Miller that the Government would establish a National Commission on Cultural and Creative Industries which would assist the Government in setting policy and legislative frameworks to “maximise” the benefits of Jamaica’s cultural and creative sectors because, as she said: “Whether it is our music, our cuisine, our dance and other forms of our artistic expression, they all represent significant value with tremendous economic potential in an increasingly globalised world.”

In his July 2012 contribution to the Sectoral Debate, minister of state in the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment, Honourable Damion Crawford, announced that the Entertainment Advisory Board had been re-established to guide and influence policies and programmes, aimed at developing the sector and making the industry more productive for not only the practitioners, but the nation.

“The outputs of culture, such as the visual and performing arts, need to be effectively organised in order to reap the full economic benefits of our creativity, and ensure that entertainment becomes a tool for progress,” the state minister said. We note that the first outing of the Entertainment Advisory Board was a series of free musical concerts in the Hope Gardens Park.

In March of this year, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller announced that: “Our sporting heritage has been phenomenal and our cultural output has arrested the attention of the world independent of each other”, and that now the linkages between the two must be established as these sectors have the potential to be important drivers of economic development.

Last Tuesday, the prime minister, in making her contribution to the 2013/14 Budget Debate, announced plans for the establishment of a Cultural and Creative Industries Commission, which will oversee development of Jamaica’s Cultural and Creative Industries Policy and Master Plan.

In the meantime, our artists have been working steadily on their own, day and night, to produce works of art, things of beauty, and items worthy of deep consideration that can only enhance our lives. All in the absence of significant government support while foreign hip-hop and visual artists have come to Jamaica, immersed themselves in our culture and used it to propel themselves to the top of international reggae charts or to the pinnacle of the global art world — and our benefit will be little more than the public relations that we will receive from their great success.

If the cultural industries are to provide the greatest competitive and comparative advantage for Jamaica, as our leaders say they will, then we must insist that they be given due respect and action, not just a bag of words.

scowicomm@gmail.com