Wes­ley Gib­bings

This coun­try’s search for a more di­verse eco­nom­ic base re­mains among the more chal­leng­ing en­gage­ments of the cur­rent pe­ri­od.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions have been pro­mot­ing greater in­vest­ment in the cre­ative sec­tor, with­in which, it is ar­gued, re­sides vast, un­tapped eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial.

Vi­su­al arts, out­side of the Car­ni­val in­dus­try, have long gen­er­at­ed in­ter­est, but there have not been a sub­stan­tial num­ber of tak­ers in a sec­tor with the po­ten­tial to earn in the hun­dreds of mil­lions an­nu­al­ly.

For cre­ative in­vestors An­tho­ny and Marie Hink­son, how­ev­er, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be seized. Marie is an en­tre­pre­neur, in­vestor, busi­ness own­er and art col­lec­tor, along­side her hus­band, who is him­self an en­tre­pre­neur and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ex­pert.

Their in­vest­ment in the lo­cal vi­su­al arts sec­tor through El­e­vat­ed Art So­lu­tions and the El­e­vat­ed Cre­ative Hub in­volves two main plat­forms in­tend­ed to pro­vide artists, stu­dents, schools, busi­ness­es and cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs with ac­cess to art sup­plies, pro­fes­sion­al fram­ing and print­ing, ex­hi­bi­tions and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.

For Marie, an art con­nois­seur, the de­ci­sion is root­ed in both per­son­al con­nec­tion and a be­lief that the coun­try’s cre­ative sec­tor re­mains an un­der­de­vel­oped eco­nom­ic re­source.

Born in Stat­en Is­land, New York, to Trinida­di­an par­ents, she spent much of her child­hood in T&T be­fore leav­ing at 15. Re­turn­ing to the coun­try and in­vest­ing in it, she says, was al­ways an op­tion on the ta­ble.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is an es­sen­tial part of my iden­ti­ty,” Marie says.

But the in­vest­ment in art is al­so a cal­cu­lat­ed re­sponse to what she and her hus­band see as a gap be­tween the coun­try’s abun­dance of cre­ative tal­ent and the op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to that tal­ent.

“We see tremen­dous, un­tapped tal­ent, cul­tur­al val­ue and eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial,” Marie says.

That po­ten­tial, she ar­gues, is be­ing con­strained less by a short­age of cre­ativ­i­ty than by a short­age of fi­nance, in­fra­struc­ture and in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port.

“What’s miss­ing is not cre­ativ­i­ty,” she says, “but enough op­por­tu­ni­ties, sup­port and re­sources” to help artists turn their abil­i­ties in­to sus­tain­able ca­reers.

The Hinksons’ ex­pe­ri­ence with the vi­su­al arts has re­in­forced that view. Their re­cent New Gen ex­hi­bi­tion at their El­e­vat­ed Cre­ative Hub Shoppes of Mar­aval fa­cil­i­ty pro­vid­ed what Marie de­scribes as an en­cour­ag­ing demon­stra­tion of what can hap­pen when emerg­ing cre­atives are giv­en pro­fes­sion­al ex­po­sure.

For less ex­pe­ri­enced artists, she ar­gues, hav­ing their work dis­played in a pro­fes­sion­al gallery is sig­nif­i­cant.

“It gave them con­fi­dence while al­low­ing a wider au­di­ence to see what they could pro­duce.”

“New Gen showed us what can hap­pen when young artists are giv­en that chance,” Marie says. The ex­hi­bi­tion was cu­rat­ed by Car­risa Bruce, her­self a pro­lif­ic emerg­ing tal­ent.

The ex­pe­ri­ence al­so strength­ened the Hinksons’ con­vic­tion that in­vest­ment in the cre­ative sec­tor has to ex­tend be­yond pro­vid­ing a place to dis­play art.

Artists need ac­cess to qual­i­ty ma­te­ri­als, ex­hi­bi­tion spaces and men­tor­ship, but they al­so need to un­der­stand the busi­ness of be­ing an artist, in­clud­ing pric­ing, mar­ket­ing, con­tracts and in­tel­lec­tu­al-prop­er­ty pro­tec­tion.

That, in Marie’s view, is where the emerg­ing con­cept of the “Or­ange Econ­o­my” be­comes sig­nif­i­cant to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion am­bi­tions.

Cre­ativ­i­ty is al­ready em­bed­ded in the coun­try’s cul­ture, she ar­gues—through art, mu­sic, Car­ni­val, fash­ion, film, food and oth­er forms of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion.

The chal­lenge is to turn that cre­ativ­i­ty in­to sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“We have to move be­yond sim­ply talk­ing about how tal­ent­ed we are,” Marie says.

That means de­vel­op­ing mar­kets at home while al­so tak­ing T&T’s cre­ative prod­ucts to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences. The Caribbean di­as­po­ra, she be­lieves, can be­come an im­por­tant part of that process by pur­chas­ing Caribbean art and help­ing artists gain ac­cess to wider mar­kets.

The eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions, she ar­gues, ex­tend well be­yond in­di­vid­ual artists.

“If we tru­ly in­vest in our cre­ative in­dus­tries, they can cre­ate jobs, en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship, at­tract vis­i­tors and gen­er­ate new in­come for the coun­try,” Marie says.

It is an ar­gu­ment that places the arts with­in the broad­er di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dis­cus­sion rather than treat­ing them sim­ply as a cul­tur­al ameni­ty.

The Hinksons in­tend to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing El­e­vat­ed Art So­lu­tions at Long Cir­cu­lar Road in Mar­aval and the Cre­ative Hub as part of that ecosys­tem. Their plans in­clude ex­hi­bi­tions, work­shops, ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes and events, while help­ing both emerg­ing and es­tab­lished Caribbean artists present and mar­ket their work more ef­fec­tive­ly.

The am­bi­tion even­tu­al­ly ex­tends be­yond T&T.

“Our jour­ney be­gins in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but our vi­sion reach­es across the Caribbean,” Marie says.

For a coun­try ac­cus­tomed to mea­sur­ing eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial large­ly through tra­di­tion­al sec­tors, the Hinksons’ in­vest­ment rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent propo­si­tion: that cre­ativ­i­ty it­self can be an eco­nom­ic re­source – and that the fail­ure to build the sys­tems around it may be cost­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Their wa­ger is that the tal­ent al­ready ex­ists. What re­mains to be built, they ar­gue, is the in­fra­struc­ture, mar­ket ac­cess and com­mer­cial sup­port ca­pa­ble of turn­ing that tal­ent in­to an in­dus­try. They are pre­pared to in­vest in that prospect and are bet­ting on high na­tion­al re­turns.