(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Second Meeting of the Regional Task Force on Cultural Industries opened today, Monday 1 June, in Suriname, with the pressing issue of the future of Caribbean Cultural Industries high on the agenda.

The meeting observed and noted that for the Caribbean Cultural Industries to bloom successfully, artists, governments and institutions needed to play their respective roles.

It was agreed that governments and other institutions needed to provide incentives as well as to create the enabling environment that would encourage artists to establish their operational base in the Caribbean and to be motivated to repatriate the income they generate overseas to the Caribbean.

The Task Force’s work is carried out with funding by both the European Union (EU), through the Hub and Spokes Trade Project, which is administered by the Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with the CARICOM Secretariat and the United Nations Education Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO).

Chair of the Meeting, Sydney Bartley, Director of Culture, Jamaica, lamented that there were too few formal structures or mechanisms in place within the Caribbean for educating and nurturing talents to support the development of the creative industries.

According to Mr Bartley, artists within the Caribbean are “accidental creations,” rather than the product of a coordinated strategy to discover, nurture and develop talent in a systematic way. He emphasized, and the members agreed, that the formal education system should recognize and include arts education within the school curriculum. Creative talents, he said, should evolve into disciplines which were examinable and certifiable within the formal education system.

“If we are going to create an industry, then we have to establish and formalize the processes,” he asserted. “The creative industries will be as strong as its nurseries and we need to take the time to create and foster those nurseries through the education system,” he said.

On the other hand however, the Meeting acknowledged that the key players in the creative industries - the artists themselves - needed to establish professional standards and organize themselves into associations with solid operational structures and mechanisms, if they wanted to be taken seriously and to command the financial support of government and other institutions.

The Regional Task Force on Cultural Industries was established by both the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) and the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) to develop a comprehensive Regional Strategy and Action Plan for the Region’s cultural industries.

As a result, the major item on its two-day agenda is the development of this strategy as well as measures to advance the regional agenda for the cultural industries with its recently nominated Champion for Culture, the Hon Olivia Grange, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, with responsibility for Gender Affairs and Community Development.

The Twenty-member Task Force comprises representatives from a wide cross section of relevant sectors: culture, industry; government, trade and finance; educational institutions and the private sector as well as representatives of regional organizations including the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat, Caribbean Export, the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) and the CARICOM Secretariat.