Andrea Dempster Chung
Kingston Wins Caribbean Creative Tourism Award
By Andrea Dempster Chung, Executive Director, Kingston Creative
There is a version of Kingston that lives in our imagination; loud and vibrant, with pulsating music on every corner and bass beats of dancehall, reggae and dub emanating from brightly coloured sound system boxes piled high to the sky. In that vision, the city is filled with live music events, murals adorn the walls and people move freely from dances to parties to festivals. In this Kingston, hotels and restaurants are filled, and culture drives a vibrant creative economy where tourism, art and entrepreneurship thrive. Somewhere between vision and reality, something remarkable is being built. It has a name, three international awards, and an address: Water Lane, Downtown Kingston.
Recently, an international jury representing the Creative Tourism Awards, in partnership with the UNESCO-EU Transcultura programme recognised Kingston Creative for Best Strategy for a Caribbean Urban Destination. This is Kingston Creative’s third major global tourism honour. The World’s Best Creative Destination award was received by Minister Edmund Bartlett at the ITB Convention in Berlin in 2023. Kingston also won leading travel brand, Expedia’s Sustainability in Tourism award in 2024.
Creative Tourism Awards, in partnership with the UNESCO-EU Transcultura programme recognised Kingston Creative for Best Strategy for a Caribbean Urban Destination.
These awards are a nod to the strides being made by the nonprofit arts organisation that for almost a decade has been consistently advocating for opportunities for artists and the transformation of Downtown Kingston. Kingston Creative has been building partnerships and executing projects that are redefining the tourism offering. This strategy works, it is replicable, and it is a blueprint that every town and city in Jamaica and across the Caribbean needs.
The Strategy: Start Small, Stay Consistent
But how did we get here and what was the strategy? Transforming Downtown into a visitor-ready, investable location once seemed an impossible task. Water Lane was not always a buzzing tourism destination. A decade ago, the area was neglected and overlooked with a few businesses just hanging on. A furniture maker, three bars and a roti shop were the only tenants, while the rest of the lane was either abandoned, serving as back door delivery entrances for the businesses headquartered on Harbour Street. We made a deliberate decision to start small and take incremental actions, as initially, there was no funding available to approach this transformation in a top down manner. We decided to locate the Kingston Creative Art District in the narrow back lanes, in the heart of Downtown Kingston where the music culture was born. We placed it near the museums, the national art gallery, and the 7th largest natural harbour in the world, rather than seeking a more conventional, easier, “uptown” location.
Water Lane’s distinctive signage marks the entrance to Downtown Kingston’s most dynamic creative corridor. The murals adorning the street emerged from a collaborative partnership between Kingston Creative and local and international artists and organizations, transforming public space into a gallery that belongs to everyone.
That decision to bet on people and place and build the Art District from the ground up in an area rich in history and community, was the winning strategy. For Kingston Creative, it was not about inventing a sanitised experience for visitors. It was about inviting people in to share an authentic experience, with real Jamaicans. We wanted visitors to interact with the community and to experience the heritage and decaying beauty of the architecture that is Downtown Kingston. It was about trusting that although Downtown Kingston is far from perfect, what people would find there is more compelling than anything else that we could manufacture.
Once we had the place, our implementation approach was to invest in what already existed. We started with very visible work, using murals to beautify the old roofless buildings in Water Lane and that spread from East Street to Orange Street. We then had to activate the space with monthly events, so we developed the monthly Artwalk festival, building on the National Gallery of Jamaica’s “Last Sundays” event. In order to make sure that entrepreneurs had somewhere to access training, network, and to host their meetings and events, we built a creative hub on the upper floor of a 100-year old building. Slowly but surely, the “destination” emerged over time.
Thousands gather Downtown for the Kingston Creative Artwalk Festival, a free event that showcases the city as a safe place of culture, creativity, and community.
What a Creative Urban Tourism Strategy Actually Requires
Partnership was the most important piece of the strategy, and probably the most time consuming. We had conversations, built trust, and partnered with the government, businesses, foundations and multilaterals. Any individual or organisation willing to invest one million dollars or more in cash or in kind became a First 100 Partner — a Founder of the Creative City, recognised with a permanent plaque in the Art District. The result of this, is what visitors to Kingston now experience through the daily tours and quarterly festivals. The Art District is a cultural tourism experience where culture is not staged for tourists but lived by the people who create it.
This strategy requires patience, partnership and persistence. Taking small steps is not flashy. Results do not show up at the end of a quarter or even a year. What we are building is trust with our partners and creative community. Healthy ecosystems take time to develop. It requires the ability to share credit, because no single organisation can transform a city alone. The First 100 partners that saw and invested in the vision are truly the founders of the creative city and we owe them a debt of thanks.
The Kingston Creative Team in front of the First 100 Donor Wall on Church Street, Downtown Kingston. The Donor wall celebrates the first 100 donors and funders of the Downtown Kingston Arts District.
Visitors flock to Water Lane to experience Kingston’s thriving street art scene firsthand. The murals, created by world-class artists have transformed Downtown Kingston into one of the Caribbean’s most compelling urban destinations.
Redefining What Success Looks Like
It also requires a different way to measure success. It’s not just visitor numbers and revenue, although those are important. Many corporate veterans ask me – So how do you make money? Not understanding that the true measure of our success lies in the young people from the community that feel pride in their neighbourhood and who are less stigmatised by society, community residents who find employment as tour guides, a reduction in crime on a particular street, or the number of visitors that spend with local bars and restaurants, photographs that share with the world visuals that quietly, persistently change how Kingston – and by extension Jamaica – is perceived.
Visitors flock to Water Lane to experience Kingston’s thriving street art scene firsthand. The murals, created by world-class artists have transformed Downtown Kingston into one of the Caribbean’s most compelling urban destinations.
The Missing Piece: Music
One of our best-selling tours is called Sounds of the City, where tourists spend half a day visiting the Water Lane Murals, Beat Street, Trench Town’s Culture Yard and other iconic music locations. The Augmented Reality feature on the murals plays music by artists like Kabaka Pyramid, and the record shop, Rockers International on Beat Street plays vintage vinyl. Winning Best Strategy for a Caribbean Urban Destination confirms that Kingston Creative’s Art District is becoming a model for creative tourism, but there is one dimension of the experience that we are only just beginning to unlock; the music.
Kingston is not just any creative city. It is the birthplace of reggae, one of the most influential musical genres in global history. Reggae is a movement that has transformed Jamaica’s brand and cultural identity worldwide. It shaped political consciousness, inspired social movements, and created a global audience that continues to look to Kingston as the mecca of the music.
Yet in many ways, seekers exploring Downtown Kingston find it hard to experience the music. They encounter our music mostly through history, through museum exhibits like Peter Tosh and Bunny Lee, stories, and the legacy of icons like Bob Marley. The next stage of Kingston’s cultural tourism strategy is to bring music back into the streets where it was born.
The energy of Downtown Kingston comes alive on Water Lane, where colourful murals create the perfect backdrop for visitors and locals alike to celebrate the city’s creative spirit. The street has become a hub of cultural expression and joyful discovery.
On the Sounds of the City Tour, Rockers International Record Store still flies the flag high for Jamaican vinyl for over 40 years and is one of the historic stops visitors enjoy.
Music as an Economic Engine
Creative tourism today is about immersion. Visitors do not simply want to observe culture — they want to experience it. The Art District already offers murals, galleries, festivals, and creative markets. But imagine walking through Water Lane and hearing a carefully curated soundscape that blends reggae classics, dub, ska, dancehall, and emerging artists. Imagine murals accompanied by music created by Jamaican producers. Imagine visitors discovering new Jamaican music simply by walking through the district. Music can transform that visit to Downtown Kingston into a fully sensory experience — one that reflects our identity as a global music capital and generates new economic opportunities for musicians. Reggae is not just past heritage. It is a living, breathing industry. When properly integrated into tourism, music can generate sustainable income for artists, producers, sound engineers, and cultural entrepreneurs – provided it is protected by robust intellectual property frameworks and amplified by technology.
An Open Call: The Soundtrack of Downtown Kingston
To begin that next chapter, Kingston Creative will be launching a new initiative in April: The Soundtrack of Downtown Kingston. We are issuing an open call to Jamaican musicians, producers, and artistes to help design the musical identity of Water Lane in the Art District. Artists can collaborate to create an evolving soundscape that reflects the past, present, and future of Kingston’s music culture, from reggae’s roots to the contemporary sounds shaping Jamaica today. Musicians will come together to select the winner, who will receive a cash prize.
This project will turn Water Lane into something unique in the Caribbean: a street where visual art and music work together to tell the story of the city. The soundtrack of Kingston has always existed. Now we want to bring it into the open, into the public realm, where both residents and visitors can experience it.
“Toots“ by Joshua Solas, is a tribute to Reggae Icon, Frederick Nathaniel “Toots” Hibbert. This mural celebrates Reggae Music which is a designated UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and Kingston, Jamaica which is a UNESCO Creative City of Music.
What This Award Means — and What It Demands
International recognition is a gift. But it is also a responsibility. Kingston is now on a global stage in a new way. That visibility will bring scrutiny alongside opportunity. It demands that we continue to deepen our community relationships and resist the temptation to become a museum of the culture we were, rather than a living expression of the culture we are.
For Jamaica’s tourism sector, this award is a reminder that the most powerful thing we can offer visitors is the irreplaceable experience of being with people, and in a place that is genuinely, confidently itself. Water Lane is proof that Downtown Kingston can be that place. If we continue to invest in our artists — including the musicians who are the foundation of Brand Jamaica — the ecosystem we are building will sustain Kingston’s cultural tourism leadership for generations. The world is already listening. Now we invite Jamaica’s musicians to help shape what the world hears next.
Downtown Kingston is not a destination to be observed from a distance. It belongs to all of us — and what we build there will define how the world sees Jamaica for decades to come.
