UNESCO, CARICOM and The University of the West Indies (UWI) have launched the ‘Creative Caribbean – An Ecosystem of “Play” for Growth and Development’ project in the amount of Euros 3 million.
A release yesterday from the project said it will be implemented over forty months and is financed by the European Union (EU) with support from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of States under the ACP-EU 11th EDF Culture Programme.
Creative Caribbean aims to provide grants and improve the economic conditions of creatives in a bid to push sustainable growth of the Caribbean’s Creative and Culture Industry (CCI). The grant schemes are divided into three categories: industry grants, enabling environment grants and training grants.
The Industry grant category includes:
1. Festival Development and Marketplace, Work Placement &
Knowledge Transfer;
2. Artist Mobility – Artist Residencies;
3. Product Development and Content Production;
4. Small Grants for Professional Associations;
5. Small Grants for Emerging Creative Content Originator;
6. Scaling Grants for Export-Ready Creatives;
7. CCI Festival Business Exchange Networks and Fora.
Falling under the Enabling Environment grant category are the following:
1. Visual Literacy and Performing Arts;
2. National Artist Registries;
3. Data Intelligence;
4. Cultural Policy;
5. National Implementation Plans;
6. Draft Legislation;
7. Institutional Strengthening;
8. Creative City Sub-Sector Accelerators;
The Training grant scheme includes:
1. Visual Literacy and Performing Arts;
2. Transversal Capacity Building Workshops.
There will be two rounds of grant calls in 2022, the release said. The first round, live now, includes two grant categories, Industry and Enabling Environment. The second round of grant calls, set to be launched in the fourth quarter of this year, will include all three categories, Industry, Enabling Environment and Training grants.
The project aims to generate the research and data needed to better regional policies and laws around the creative and culture industry while facilitating capacity-building activities. Fifteen Caribbean countries identified for implementation will benefit from this injection of support into the CCI ecosystem: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, The Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago.
