Kingston, Jamaica— It is time for Jamaica to claim a larger share of the US$3 trillion global creative economy, says Opposition Spokesperson on Culture, Creative Industries and Information, Nekeisha Burchell.

Burchell addressed the issue on May 13 during her contribution to the Sectoral Debate at Gordon House.

She noted that the global economy is increasingly shaped by streaming, digital media, artificial intelligence, influencer economies, creator platforms and direct-to-audience monetisation. She told the Parliament Jamaican influence is deeply embedded across many of these spaces.

“Our music shapes international sounds. Our slang travels globally. Our dance styles are replicated internationally. Our aesthetics influence fashion and entertainment worldwide. Yet too often, Jamaica remains at the edge of the value chain rather than at the centre of ownership,” said Burchell.

“We export influence, but we under-capture value,” she added.

Continuing, Burchell said, “That is one of the great economic questions of our time. How do we ensure that the people creating cultural value also retain economic value? Because intellectual property is no longer a secondary issue. It is economic infrastructure and Jamaica must position itself aggressively around copyright protection, licensing, royalties, creator education, digital monetisation, and ownership rights”.

Burchell lamented that too many Jamaican creatives remain culturally celebrated while economically vulnerable. “That contradiction must change,” she insisted.

It is to this end that she said investment in the creative industries cannot be treated as charity or cultural goodwill.

“It is economic strategy. It is youth employment strategy. It is export strategy. It is digital economy strategy. This is why the People’s National Party (PNP) had already proposed from as early as 2025 a $1 billion Creative Economy Support Fund, regional creative hubs, content studios, audiovisual training and structured support for young creators and creative entrepreneurs, because talent without structure cannot fully scale”.

The Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) for St James Southern said it was also time for Jamaica to move beyond being merely a scenic backdrop for other people’s productions.

She told the Parliament that, “I speak as the proud MP for an area in South St James called Flat Johnson, where one of the earliest James Bond films utilised the beautiful White Witch Mountain backdrop in our constituency. So I understand the value of Jamaica’s scenery and cinematic appeal. As a country, we must move beyond being merely a backdrop for other people’s stories.

“We must become owners of stories ourselves, exporters of stories and controllers of intellectual property because storytelling is one of the most powerful economic tools in the modern world, and this conversation must also include entertainment itself as Jamaica’s marketed identity versus Jamaica’s regulatory reality remains deeply contradictory”.

Burchell pointed out that Jamaica is marketed globally through music, nightlife, dancehall, festivals and cultural energy, while simultaneously placing many of the very practitioners who produce that value into recurring conflict with fragmented regulatory systems.

“Jamaica profits symbolically from entertainment culture while structurally constraining many of the people who create it and those lived contradictions within Jamaican entertainment policy must now be confronted honestly,” she said.

She reminded that that was why the PNP proposed Special Entertainment Zones, streamlined licensing systems and more coherent entertainment frameworks.

She said, “Entertainment is economy, employment, tourism, youth opportunity and national identity. And yes, residents deserve peace and communities deserve safety, but regulation cannot continue functioning primarily as suppression.

We cannot continue celebrating dancehall globally while criminalising many of its economic spaces locally and even the Government itself has acknowledged the need for structured entertainment infrastructure through discussions surrounding entertainment development zones in areas such as Negril”.

According to Burchell, “The people are now entitled to ask: Is this merely another announcement, or is this a real national strategy that will move from announcement to implementation?”

She said Jamaica has become too accustomed to launching without follow-through. “The issue is no longer whether Jamaica recognises the need, but whether we are approaching it comprehensively, intentionally and nationally”.