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Thursday, July 31, 2025

Inaugural ACPCultures+ Creative Networks Event enhances conversation on local cultural industries

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On Tues­day 20, the re­cent­ly re-brand­ed Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts fa­cil­i­tat­ed the in­au­gur­al ACP­Cul­tures+ Cre­ative Net­works event, a round-ta­ble dis­cus­sion in­volv­ing cul­ture lead­ers from both here and abroad.

The dis­cus­sion fo­cused on the path­ways that lo­cal cul­tur­al in­dus­tries need to take for that sec­tor to grow more strate­gi­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly.

Di­rec­tor of Cul­ture, In­grid Ryan Ruben and NGC Bo­cas Lit­Fest founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown sat with C Bri­an Williams, founder of Step Afri­ka! Dance com­pa­ny, from Wash­ing­ton, DC, on the pan­el chaired by Dr Keron Niles from the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board with­in the Min­istry of Plan­ning.

Dr Niles posit­ed that one of the key fac­tors af­fect­ing growth was the top-heavy na­ture of the sec­tor: up­stream there were many cre­ators, and their out­put had not gen­er­al­ly been matched by a strong down­stream net­work of train­ing, pub­lish­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, mar­ket­ing and link­ages with oth­er sec­tors.

Williams re­lat­ed his ex­pe­ri­ence of tak­ing his dance com­pa­ny to­wards be­com­ing a na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al tour­ing com­pa­ny pre­sent­ing per­for­mance, res­i­den­cies and work­shops world­wide. The im­por­tance of ef­fi­cient net­work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly shone though.

Key in­ter­na­tion­al net­work­ing was sim­i­lar­ly re­flect­ed by Sa­landy-Brown, who at the same time spelt out the short­com­ings of the lo­cal pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor with re­gard to the at­ti­tudes to cul­tur­al in­dus­tries and the arts. Recog­nis­ing our own and ob­jec­tive­ly judg­ing its mer­its are equal­ly im­por­tant.

Ryan Ruben, a con­fessed straight-talk­er who pulls no punch­es, likened our cul­tur­al en­vi­ron­ment to that of a goose that lays gold­en eggs: the goose is akin to our cul­tur­al her­itage, while the eggs are the many sub-sec­tor prod­ucts and ser­vices–mu­sic, film, dance, the­atre, etc.

That anal­o­gy was used through­out the talk as the au­di­ence was warned that "eggs are per­ish­able," akin to recog­nis­ing that cul­tur­al prod­ucts should get to the mar­ket quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, and ul­ti­mate­ly in the lo­cal mar­ket, in quan­ti­ties that would jus­ti­fy seek­ing for­eign mar­kets.

Her ra­tio­nal re­flec­tion of the demise of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the ca­lyp­so tent and the Grand Stand en­vi­ron­ment for Car­ni­val �shows was jux­ta­posed with the rapid growth of the fete aes­thet­ic of the fes­ti­val to show the dis­con­nect of the cur­rent cul­ture man­agers with the mar­ket.

She sug­gest­ed that the na­tion's grand­est cul­tur­al prod­uct was wast­ing away: "the na­ture of the goose that lays those gold­en eggs has to be looked at with fresh eyes." De­spite fund­ing to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions, Car­ni­val is not the ex­pe­ri­en­tial draw it used to be. The struc­ture, we were re­mind­ed, is stuck in the last cen­tu­ry. A crit­i­cal point made by the pan­el­lists was that con­nec­tions were im­por­tant, but so were the tools that point­ed to a glob­al vi­sion of what works and what won't work.

Kate McBain, train­ing con­sul­tant with Vis­it­ing Arts out of the UK, led a work­shop the week­end be­fore the dis­cus­sion, for se­lect­ed cre­ative prac­ti­tion­ers on busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, project man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing tools and in­sights to fa­cil­i­tate "in­ter­na­tion­al­is­ing" the vi­sion out­side of the bar­rack­yard men­tal­i­ty for cul­tur­al in­dus­tries not­ed here by oth­ers. Ryan Ruben saw these work­shop par­tic­i­pants as a new wave of cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors. Ul­ti­mate­ly, these new cul­ture work­ers and man­agers will con­tin­ue their train­ing over the com­ing months in a vir­tu­al mi­lieu to­wards the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their cul­tur­al work dur­ing the Ed­in­burgh Fes­ti­vals in 2016.

The work­shop and con­tin­ued train­ing is part of a pro­gramme de­vel­oped by Vis­it­ing Arts, which "pro­vides tools to the cul­tur­al sec­tor to work more ef­fi­cient­ly and in­tel­li­gent­ly world­wide," and is fund­ed by ACP­Cul­tures+ and the EU.

Mary He­len Young, op­er­a­tions manger of Vis­it­ing Arts and project co­or­di­na­tor of Cul­ture Works Con­nec­tions, present that evening, man­aged the work­shop and not­ed its im­por­tance in the con­ver­sion of the cul­tur­al in­dus­tries here.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cul­ture min­istry's web­site, the min­istry "is a part of the Cul­ture Works Con­nec­tions pro­gramme which seeks to build stronger, more sus­tain­able cre­ative busi­ness­es that are able to ac­cess world mar­kets and de­vel­op col­lab­o­ra­tions." Ryan Ruben re­mind­ed the au­di­ence be­fore the net­work­ing ses­sion that fol­lowed, that gov­ern­ment, via a num­ber of min­istries, spends hun­dreds of mil­lions on the cul­tur­al in­dus­tries, but this spend was in essence de­void of di­rec­tion.

Dr Niles, who is re­spon­si­ble for the cre­ative in­dus­tries sec­tor in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pie at the Plan­ning min­istry, ac­knowl­edged the mul­ti-min­istry spread for the gov­ern­ment's over­sight of the sec­tor.

The au­di­ence was made aware that the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy, still in draft form and re­vised a num­ber of times, has not been pro­mul­gat­ed by any gov­ern­ment in the past.

The move to em­pow­er man­agers of the pri­vate sec­tor cul­tur­al in­dus­try–and cre­ative in­dus­try–via train­ing would de­vel­op the coun­try's po­ten­tial to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my in that di­rec­tion. The char­ac­ter of that "goose that lays the gold­en eggs" has evolved, and with that, a new­er un­der­stand­ing of how we treat it was the take­away from an en­gag­ing con­ver­sa­tion.


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