Earlier this week a sizeable group of Guyanese travelled to Florida to participate in an event that puts on display a range of fashion clothing, craft and agro-processed foods to promote Guyana and locally produced goods to the international community, more particularly in North America.
As far as we are told the Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) played an important role in the planning of the event and in ensuring that exhibitors’ goods were packed and shipped and that rebates were secured on airline tickets and hotel rooms. Go-Invest has come under pressure in the past for what its critics say has been its failure to properly execute its investment promotion mandate, so kudos are in order; even though we hope that we do not speak prematurely.
It is no secret that the creative industries are among the most popular vehicles used by countries to promote themselves on the international stage. Asia, and particularly China, now seeks to challenge the west in the fashion design industry and the competition among designers to get attention whether it be in the clothing, handicraft or jewellery sectors grows fiercer.
As for us in Guyana, it appears simply never to have occurred to us that the global creative industries are now among countries’ most important marketing tools. To cut to the chase, while there may well be no shortage of creative talent right here in the Republic to match that elsewhere in the world, we have lacked the foresight to make the kinds of strategic investments necessary to make a difference.
It may well be that we have lacked the foresight to recognise and support our creative sectors in much the same way that we have recognised and invested in the agricultural and mining sectors. By failing to create an infrastructure to support the creative industries we have allowed much of that talent to wither and die or else to flourish outside Guyana. Cumulatively, we have been the losers.
It’s hard to tell where this latest initiative will take us. In the past, gestures of this kind have lacked consistency and once the euphoria of the event is over the sector is left to dry out for a while before its gets thrown another bone.
From all that we have heard, the Florida event is about much more than simply displaying creations. It is, we are told, about laying the groundwork for serious entry into the global market of which the United States is an essential microcosm. The initiative is deserving of the country’s support but we still need to wait and see what follows.
