Why programme design may be the most overlooked tool in building St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ cultural and creative industries.
We have become exceptionally good at talking about culture and creativity. Conferences, symposiums, consultations, panels, reports, recommendations… season after season, we gather in another room to discuss the future of the cultural and creative industries. And every time, I am compelled to ask if our mission behind these spaces is to produce transformation, or simply conversation? Why do we insist on designing the most important conversations about creativity in the least creative ways imaginable? For years, we have invested tremendous effort into discussing the future of culture, Carnival, and the creative industries. Yet many of the spaces we create to have those conversations are designed in ways that limit participation, reinforce hierarchy, and produce exactly the kinds of conversations we have had before.
And one of the most famous phrases in modern politics: “It’s the economy, stupid.”, made famous by strategist James Carville in response to President Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, sits on my mind. In its original expression it was never meant as an insult, rather, a reminder to stay focused on the thing that mattered most. My reference of the same in the contemporary times in which we live and within the context of our cultural/creative industries embraces the same call; to focus on what matters. When I think about how we continue to approach the development of SVG’s cultural and creative industries, I may assume my public service juniority and may maintain diplomatic silence, but, inside I scream: “It’s in the design, stupid.” I argue that before we talk about policy, before we talk about funding, strategy documents and press releases, we ought to consider something, that may seem inconsequential, but, will prove to be far more fundamental: Our design and modelling of the spaces where culture is thought about, imagined, debated, and built.
Too often, we assume that gathering people in a conference room automatically produces consultation. Let us be frank. It does not. What if we hold space for the reality that symposiums, if sustainability is the end goal, can no longer be simply a meeting, or a collection of presentations; where participation is not measured by attendance, nor, attendance the yard stick by which we measure success. Building a sustainable cultural and creative economy necessitates a healthy cultural/creative ecosystem. Doing such, thus, calls for us to consider the design of our programmes, as such determines who feels welcome enough to speak, whose knowledge is recognized as expertise, what information is generated and ultimately what kind of policy becomes possible. Let us understand that design is policy long before policy is written or documents drafted.
Today, conversations around the cultural and creative industries increasingly speak that language of ecosystems, innovation, enterprising, sustainability and that of sustainable development. Yet, if we are honest, many of the very spaces intended to shape that “sustainable future” continue to resemble the bureaucratic structures of the twentieth century. On a more decolonial note, the very vestiges of coloniality we speak of leaving behind in the same breath. A head table…opening remarks…powerpoint presentation…questions from the floor…three, maybe, four hours…meeting adjourned. For me such a format has its place, but such a design can never understand the complexity of an emerging cultural and creative economy such as ours, and the irony is striking. We gather to discuss creativity inside spaces that leave very little room for creative practice and cultural vibrations.
From what I deduce, we continue to misunderstand the very idea of a “cultural and creative industry” and there is this quiet thinking that it is simply another name for “the arts”, they are not. The cultural and creative industries are a policy framework; a policy construct whose very genesis began in policy. I can appreciate that it may all sound technical, but it is actually quite simple. A policy framework, put simply, is a way of organizing how governments understand, support, measure and invest in a particular sector. I lament that calling something a cultural and creative industry should (and must) change the questions we ask. Instead of only asking, “how do we support artists?”, we must now also ask, “How do ideas become livelihoods?”, How does heritage generate economic opportunity?”, “How do our communities benefit?”, “What skills are missing?”, “What infrastructure exists?”, “Where are the gaps?”, “How do different sectors connect?” Talking about cultural and creative industries must shift our attention from isolated projects toward an interconnected ecosystem. This thing must now be viewed and understood in its entirety, as encompassing festivals, fashion, design, film, music, publishing, digital media, architecture, heritage, gastronomy, craft, cultural tourism, education, technology and the informal systems that continue (for the most parts) to sustain Vincentian cultural life for generations. That is why I say that that ecosystem cannot be understood through the same ole’ consultation alone; it has to be intentionally designed for.
This becomes particularly true in the realities of our Vincentian space. Our cultural/creative economy remains largely informal and embryonic. Many practitioners hold full-time jobs outside of the sector, traditional knowledge holders often live outside of Kingstown, some of our greatest cultural knowledge exists in rural communities and throughout the Grenadines, carried by individuals who may never attend a government consultation. Others simply do not feel comfortable speaking in highly formal environments dominated by officials, executives and institutional titles. This does not mean that these voices are absent, it means that we would have failed to reach them, when participation depends on who can leave work at three o’clock on a weekday, or travel to the capital, enter a formal conference room and publicly compete for speaking time, we have already narrowed the conversation before it even begins. I caution that attendance should not be mistaken for representation.
Intentional programme design would prompt us, as public officers, to ask different questions: “Who is missing?”, “Whose expertise is invisible?”, “What information are we actually trying to generate?”, “What conversations need small groups instead of a mic across a large room?”, “Where should disagreements happen?”, “How will we capture what is said?”, “How will our communities see themselves reflected afterwards?”, “How will today’s discussion influence tomorrow’s policy?”. We must now understand that every engagement produces data. Whether we intentionally design to collect the right data is what we must contend with, as without structured facilitation, proper documentation, thematic working groups, participatory exercises, stakeholder mapping and clear reporting mechanisms consultation risks becoming little more than a record of individual opinions. Dynamic programme design transforms conversations into evidence, that evidence becomes our policy, our policy shapes our investment and ultimately our investment shapes our industries.
The challenge before us goes beyond the hosting of more symposiums. Rather, it is to rethink what consultation looks like in a Vincentian cultural context. What if discussions, like political campaigns, travelled into communities as opposed to expecting communities to travel to government? What if practitioners received discussion papers beforehand instead of seeing the agenda for the first time upon arrival? What if our sessions were designed around collaborative working groups? What if traditional practitioners facilitate conversations alongside “high ranking” officials? What if visual mapping, storytelling, performance, demonstration and creative practice become legitimate methods of consultation? What if “knowledge” moved in more than one direction? They must not be seen as mere cosmetic changes, they fundamentally alter the kind of knowledge that emerges.
The cultural and creative economy is built differently from most sectors because its primary resource is people. By and large, people with memories, people with stories, with inherited knowledge, people with imagination. If we truly wish to build a Vincentian cultural and creative ecosystem, our consultation process must reflect the very characteristics we claim define the sector itself; creative, collaborative, participatory, adaptive, culturally grounded and bold enough to experiment. Should we continue to design industrial-age meetings in an effort to build a 21st century cultural/creative economy, we must not be surprised when we struggle to move beyond familiar conversations.
Our cultural and creative future will not be solely determined by the policies we write, the spaces we design to imagine them would. In the end, it is in the design, stupid.
By Jaykel J. Mars
a Vincentian cultural practitioner, theatre-maker, and emerging public intellectual writing on culture, governance, and the creative economy. He challenges conventional approaches to cultural development and advocates for systems that are more participatory, equitable, and rooted in Vincentian realities.
