The Opposition Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, Lisa Hanna, is imploring the Government to take steps to monetise the country’s cultural offerings for which Jamaicans are known around the world.

Speaking recently in the Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives, Hanna pointed out that the creative economy contributes approximately 6.1 per cent to the global gross domestic product (GDP), averaging between two per cent and seven per cent of the GDP worldwide.

In addition, Hanna cited that the United Nations estimates that the creative industries generate annual revenues of over US$2 trillion and nearly 50 million global jobs with the potential “to support countries with economies in transition in diversifying production and exports…”

Hanna pointed out that over the years, successive governments have viewed culture as “a mere season of ad hoc activities intended to make our people feel nice, but not as a serious industry requiring stimuli that could significantly grow our economy and better our people’s lives”.

“Both sides have reluctantly acted with conviction and financial devotion towards strengthening and developing our people’s creative skills and deepening our cultural infrastructure,” Hanna said.

She highlighted that in the last financial year, culture as a line item in the recurrent budget received only 5.2 per cent of the total budget compared to tourism which received 13.5 per cent.

“Compensation and travel represented the bulk of expenditure, with little to drive any meaningful change. The capital budget for culture was the lowest of all ministries, almost zero, a total of $31.8 million or 3.7 per cent,” Hanna lamented.

“This year is the worst, as there are no real recurrent increases for programmes nor blue pages, i.e., capital expenditure for new projects,” she added while questioning why this was so.

Hanna pointed out that the world is massive, with 7.8 billion people, and Jamaica, with .038 per cent of the population, is relatively minuscule in the scale of things.

“Yet our size has never prevented us from making a mammoth impact on the world stage with an influence more than 1,000 times our population,” she argued.

She said it was time to allocate more resources to build out the framework “to transform the cultural teaching framework within our school system with a sustained capital budget to fund harnessing, developing, and strengthening the cultural value chain of our people’s lives rather than the focus on spending primarily on celebratory activities”.

“This will not only assist in the social transformation of our nation by giving our children a consistent diet of artistic skills training for their future which would, in turn, strengthen their Jamaican identity and, ultimately, the viability of the brand Jamaica,” Hanna said.

She said primary schools should be equipped “to train our children in the cultural arts, painting, sculpting, photography, dance, and formal music training”.

And Hanna also called for the construction of two globally competitive performance/creative arts-based high schools, one in Kingston and the other in the West, with the attendant boarding facilities to rival some of the best in the world.