The Caribbean has a very pow­er­ful cul­tur­al prod­uct, which is not be­ing ful­ly mon­e­tised to the re­gion’s ben­e­fit. Reg­gae mu­sic is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned, while Trinidad’s Car­ni­val has been ex­port­ed around the world.

Ac­cord­ing to St Kitts and Nevis’ Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Fish­eries and Ma­rine Re­sources; Sports; Small Busi­ness, En­tre­pre­neur­ship, Co­op­er­a­tives and Cre­ative Econ­o­my, Samal Mo­jah Dug­gins, the re­gion is leav­ing mon­ey on the ta­ble due to ne­glect and lim­it­ed de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean cul­tur­al sec­tor.

It is from this back­drop that the gov­ern­ment of St. Kitts and Nevis cre­at­ed the Cre­ative Pow­er Arts Con­ven­tion (CPAC) and Caribbean Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment.

The con­ven­tion was launched in 2024 and is set to be held every two years. How­ev­er, the 2026 edi­tion has been pushed back to the first quar­ter of 2027 due to a con­gest­ed cal­en­dar in St. Kitts and Nevis. In the in­ter­im, Dug­gins is urg­ing the rest of the Caribbean to in­crease its in­vest­ment in the Or­ange econ­o­my while al­so un­veil­ing a star-stud­ded line­up of fa­cil­i­ta­tors who can con­vey the best in­for­ma­tion, ex­pe­ri­ence, and de­vel­op­ment to young cre­ators across the re­gion.

“We’ve launched two such fa­cil­i­ta­tors over the last week­end. The man Machel Mon­tano him­self, who will be speak­ing to the art of per­for­mance and putting his years of ex­pe­ri­ence in­to play and bring­ing his wis­dom of cap­ti­vat­ing per­sons on the stage, cap­ti­vat­ing per­sons by his mu­sic, cap­ti­vat­ing per­sons by his con­veyance of art and cre­ativ­i­ty and charis­ma, and teach­ing our young cre­atives how to make that con­sis­tent and to bring apart longevi­ty in this space,” said Dug­gins,

The oth­er fa­cil­i­ta­tor is Stephen, ‘Di Ge­nius’ Mc­Gre­gor, who the St Kitts min­is­ter de­scribed as one of the Caribbean’s pre­mier pro­duc­ers.

“We know Stephen for many of the top hits com­ing out of the Caribbean, as well as dif­fer­ent ar­eas around the globe. He has worked with the likes of Drake, Shaki­ra, the Mar­leys, Vy­bz Kar­tel, Mova­do, you name it, he has worked with these artistes, and he has cre­at­ed a num­ber of hits glob­al­ly be­cause of that work.”

“I thought if we cre­at­ed a min­istry de­part­ment, rather than it fo­cussing ex­clu­sive­ly on dri­ving the sec­tor, it would serve to change the mind­set of per­sons to not just see it as a hob­by­ist sec­tor, but to see it as a re­al vi­able area for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” said Dug­gins, who added his min­istry had al­so the worked on the con­struc­tion of the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre which along with CPAC is de­signed to help es­tab­lish St. Kitts as a strate­gic hub for cre­ative de­vel­op­ment through­out the Caribbean re­gion.

“When you have a home that is ded­i­cat­ed to you, you have a pres­ence, and that pres­ence will speak loud­ly. I be­lieve that this is no longer a hob­by­ist sec­tor. This is no longer some­thing that we could over­look, but a vi­able means of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

He con­tin­ued, “We wish to ex­tend that in­vi­ta­tion not just the peo­ple of St Kitts and Nevis but, we be­lieve that this is ben­e­fi­cial for the oth­er ter­ri­to­ries around the OECS and even the wider space of Cari­com, and any­body from around the world who wish­es to be a part of a move­ment like this, it is open to all to join and be a part of it.”

A ma­jor goal of CPAC, Dug­gins ex­plained, is to tran­si­tion the cre­ative sec­tor away from be­ing viewed as a “hob­by­ist” field.

Dug­gins re­lat­ed that he was crit­i­cised for his youth­ful dream of be­com­ing a stage per­former, which saw him push him­self heav­i­ly in­to aca­d­e­mics. How­ev­er, he is hope­ful that CPAC will help the re­gion har­ness its own cre­ative tal­ent al­low­ing cre­atives to build a sus­tain­able liveli­hood from their work,. while al­so pre­vent­ing ma­jor en­ti­ties out­side the re­gion from tak­ing con­trol of Caribbean cre­ativ­i­ty and art.

“I think that we as a so­ci­ety have to be care­ful that we are not dri­ving some of our best tal­ent away from our pas­sions. Be­cause when we look at those per­sons who have suc­ceed­ed and ex­celled in the cre­ative space, we see the glob­al im­pact that they’ve cre­at­ed. Let’s take Robert Nestor Mar­ley, as we af­fec­tion­ate­ly call Bob Mar­ley. Let’s take Ri­han­na. Let’s take even a Spar­row or Ar­row who have all im­pact­ed this world in ma­jor ways, and their lega­cy lives on, but al­so their fam­i­lies are well off be­cause of their tal­ent and their ca­reers, so for me it’s part of chang­ing the nar­ra­tive,” he said.

Dug­gins said the in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess of Ja­maica born, but St. Kitts and Nevis-based artiste By­ron Mes­sia, fur­ther un­der­lined the need for the Caribbean to come to­geth­er to max­imise the eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of the cre­ative sec­tor.

Mes­sia, while signed to Ztekk Records, an in­de­pen­dent Caribbean record la­bel found­ed and owned by Trinida­di­an dance­hall star Prince Swan­ny, record­ed his break­out hit Tal­ibans in 2023.

The song, which was par­tial­ly in­flu­enced by the cre­ation of the Trini­bad move­ment, chart­ed on the Bill­board Hot 100 and sub­se­quent­ly, a remix was done with Afrobeats star Bur­na Boy.

Dug­gins said while Mes­sia’s suc­cess was sur­pris­ing at the time, it was clear­ly built from a sound that had been emerg­ing from St Kitts and the Caribbean for some time.

“If you lis­ten to the song, for well over a decade that sound had been build­ing in St Kitts and Nevis, and By­ron Mes­si­ah was just the artist that caught the wind that it made it glob­al,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“Our abil­i­ty to har­ness that song, we may not have been as pre­pared for it when it hap­pened, but we are now look­ing at how do we har­ness that sound, how do we give it an iden­ti­ty, and how do we utilise that in mak­ing sure that we push this sound even fur­ther glob­al­ly and bring it back to not (just) St Kitts and Nevis, but the re­gion.”

Last month, KMAN (for­mer­ly known as Kman Sixx) launched a pub­lic and le­gal ap­peal to Caribbean gov­ern­ments to lift his ex­ten­sive per­for­mance bans and trav­el re­stric­tions.

Sev­er­al Trini­bad artistes have faced bans across Cari­com de­spite hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant fan­bas­es across the re­gion.

The Min­is­ter sug­gest­ed that in­stead of fo­cussing sole­ly on de­bates over lyri­cal con­tent, the re­gion should fo­cus on cap­i­tal­is­ing on the glob­al im­pact these artists have al­ready achieved to cre­ate liveli­hoods and bring cul­tur­al rel­e­vance to the ter­ri­to­ry.

“Whether or not we de­bate about the lyrics of Trini­bad artists, and what­ev­er we de­bate about that, what we can­not de­ny is the im­pact that the mu­sic is hav­ing across the re­gion and the world and we need to har­ness that. Whether it is we har­ness the artist, and yes, we could again look at the lyri­cal con­tent, and ei­ther which way we go with that, clean it up, al­low it its own space, but that de­bate is one part of the ar­gu­ment,” he said.

“The oth­er side to it is we can­not ne­glect or de­ny that these artists are hav­ing ma­jor im­pact in coun­tries around the re­gion and around the world, we need to learn how to cap­i­talise on some of that im­pact and en­sure that our coun­tries are bet­ter off”.

The event is open to in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in film, mod­el­ling, dance, mu­sic, pho­tog­ra­phy, vi­su­al arts, and cos­tume build­ing, Dug­gins ex­plained.