Dr Fazal Ali
Trade classification systems based on a product’s physical characteristics often fail to capture cultural and creative value and therefore lack statistical capacity. In the era of autonomous creative economies, we must begin to measure the economic contribution of creative industries and the international trade flows of creative goods and services.
Measuring the creative economy’s monetary contribution, especially to GDP, work, and trade, is urgent. Maps and measurements can help planners target and inform investors, identify critical clusters that can drive economic growth and increase export revenues, and outline the spatial features of creative ecologies. These mapping exercises require clear objectives, stakeholder meetings, a defined scope of creative industries, and measurement parameters.
Countries may use definitions, taxonomies, methodologies, and guidelines from UNCTAD, UNESCO, and WIPO.
The IDB defines the orange economy as activities that transform ideas into cultural and creative goods and services whose value can be protected by IP. UNESCO emphasises culture’s social and economic dimensions.
WIPO focuses on copyright and categorises industries by how much their activities depend on it. UNCTAD defines creative industries as cycles of creating, producing, and distributing goods and services that use creativity and cognitive capital as primary inputs.
However, data poverty can lead bureaucrats to overlook certain creative industries and activities. One remedy is to involve authorities and institutions in the cultural and creative sector, national statistical offices, and central banks to identify existing data lakes for measuring the creative economy’s contribution to GDP, employment, trade, and well-being.
Agencies like GlobalT&T may consider funding sprints with the statistical capacity to measure international trade flows in creative goods and services. In general, measuring servicification and international trade in creative services is increasingly important for monitoring structural transformation. More disaggregated data is needed to train indigenous AI models.
Unfortunately, taxonomies of the industrial ecologies that make up the creative economy vary globally. In 1989, the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport defined the creative industries as those that originate in individual creativity, skill, and talent and have the potential for opulence and jobs through the generation and exploitation of IP.
From this definition, a rubric of nine subsectors cascaded: 1. architecture, 2. advertising, 3. film, TV, radio, video and photography, 4. crafts, 5. IT, software, computer services, 6. publishing, 7. museums, galleries, archives, libraries, 8. visual and performing arts and sound technology, and 9. design and fashion.
Scotland identified 16 distinct industries: 1. advertising, 2. architecture, 3. visual arts, 4. crafts, 5. fashion and textiles, 6. design, 7. performing arts, 8. music, 9. photography, 10. film and video, 11. computer games, 12. radio and TV, 13. writing and publishing, 14. heritage, 15. software, and 16. cultural education. Northern Ireland defined 13 sub-sectors.
To attract foreign investment, GlobalT&T merges InvesTT, ExporTT, and CreativeTT into a bold, innovative agency that focuses on film, fashion, music, event/festival tourism, and music publishing. The National Carnival Commission (NCC) in Trinidad provides the institutional blueprint for the Carnival Industry Development and evaluates Carnival arts under structured economic and cultural rubrics.
The IDB includes the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival in its macro-level analytical rubrics and impact assessments, such as the IDB Carnival Economic Assessment, which measures creative value chains, IP, and tourism spillovers. Intellectual Property and Practitioner Rubrics, such as those used in the Intellectual Property Training Institute of Trinidad and Tobago’s courses for “Mas” practitioners, employ specialised operational rubrics to assess how costume designers and musicians commercialise and protect their work within the creative economy.
The Caribbean Development Bank’s CIIF compendium, in its Trinidad & Tobago Creative Industry Profile, officially categorises “Ramleela” under Festival Arts and Intangible Cultural Heritage within Trinidad and Tobago’s broader cultural and creative sector taxonomy.
But “Where is creativity?” How do creative people do what they do? These questions invite a loosely coupled systems view of creativity.
These two questions depart from a legacy measurement conspectus that tried to measure creativity with personality-trait instruments and divergent- and convergent-thinking tests, which find their fulcrum in the question, “What is creativity?”
If such instruments and tests are reliable, then we could easily predict which 11-year-olds in 2026 would become the next Anne Carson, Rudranath Capildeo, VS Naipaul, Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, Navi Pillay, Francisco Cabral, Arthur Lewis, Camille Pissarro, Joseph Lennox Pawan, Igor Stravinsky, Beryl McBurnie, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fr Arthur Eugene Anthony Lai Fook, Peter Minshall, Martha Graham, Jit Samaroo, and LeRoy Clarke. But we simply can’t!
A significant gap remains in creative trade data between developed and developing nations. Notions of creativity and the creative economy are evolving. Beyond the structural and ontological challenges of using data to inform policy decisions in the creative industries, we urgently need to deepen our understanding of creative ecologies, inventiveness, innovation, imagination, and the creative industries.
Dr Fazal Ali completed his Master's in Philosophy at the University of the West Indies. He was a Commonwealth Scholar who attended the University of Cambridge, Hughes Hall; the Provost of the University of Trinidad and Tobago; the acting President of UTT; and the Chairman of the Teaching Service Commission. He is the President of Niherst and an external services consultant with the IDB.
