FINANCIERS are in the hot seat following claims from creatives that financial institutions lack the willpower to fund creative enterprises.

According to the latest estimates, the local cultural and creative industries (CCIs) is valued at $2.2 billion annually (5.2 per cent of GDP).

However, director of Magnificent Ideas Limited Clyde Mckenzie argues that much of the earnings is being sent overseas because that’s where most of the investors in the industry comes from.

“A significant portion of the value chain generated by our entertainment sector resides abroad so that tells you the challenge that we face and that is a function of the investment patterns,” said Mckenzie.

He was a panellist at the latest Jamaica Observer Business Forum which focused on the orange economy.

He continued, “When you have foreigners investing in our culture they take the most significant segment of the value chain and what has been happening is that in the creative sector we’ve been primary producers just as we’ve been in bauxite. So, we produce what is called the raw material and a guy comes in and he does the marketing and dresses it up and when he does that he automatically derives the most significant benefit from the value chain.”

Dr Deborah Hickling Gordon, who is a communication and culture-in-development strategist and commentator, told the panel that the financing deficit in the CCI isn’t new and is largely due to the lack of willpower on the part of financiers.

“It’s not for want of the means to value cultural and creative products and services, it’s really just about the will,” said Hickling Gordon.

She emphasised that financiers don’t take the time to understand every aspect of the industry and is therefore uninformed when adjudicating matters of credit to creatives.

“I always say that in the same way that creatives require financial literacy, financiers require creative literacy. There is a whole lot of learning to be had on one side and the other,” she argued.

She pointed to the Security Interests in Personal Property Act (SIPPA) which allows creatives to use their intangible assets as collateral in order to secure business loans. She also disclosed that in terms of valuing creative work, extensive research and formulas have been created by the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to value creative work. She further stated that there are trained valuators in Jamaica to assist with the valuation process.

In the meantime, artiste manager and consultant Donovan Watkis Jr said the reluctance to finance the CCIs has a lot to do with how the industry is perceived by financiers.

“We have a major problem of public image for the entertainment industry. For every Sumfest, every show, everything that proves the value of the entertainment sector, there’s a big story that comes out that links it to crime. When entertainment is spoken about as a place where criminals flourish, I resent that notion! Every industry has criminals but they don’t get tied to the industry, but when entertainment has criminal elements it is said that entertainment and dancehall in particular is fostering it. That affects how banks lend money because that’s money laundering and banks have to justify how they lend money to people,” argued Watkis Jr.

With that said, he noted that there needs to be a rebranding of the faces in the industry as well as how it is described and marketed.

At the same time, co-founder & executive director at Kingston Creative Andrea Dempster Chung said while funding for creatives is lacking, the problem might be larger.

“It’s not just investment, you’re gonna keep having your talent being exported and exploited until you have a local ecosystem in which they can thrive. It’s not just the money,” she stressed.

She noted that the creative ecosystem has pillars which include: training, infrastructure, think tanks, research, space and communicators.

But she noted that the ecosystem will remain a pipe dream until the industry is able to coordinate itself properly.

“Whether we say it’s nine or 13 different ministries and agencies for creating a creative city and educating, training and uplifting our creative people that needs a coordinator. The word czar is very unpopular but I’d like to see a cultural and creative industry czar. It needs coordinator from the state level,” said Dempster Chung.

Mckenzie agrees, stating that “If you deploy funding prematurely in an environment where people are poorly trained then you are inviting disaster. So, the thing to do is to determine who is to be trained and how.”

He said, “if we understand the kind of value that these people are creating and what could accrue to us if we made the appropriate type of investment, then that would be a different conversation.”