FAQs - Kingston Creative

Frequently Asked Questions

Kingston Creative is a registered Jamaican non-profit organisation founded in February 2017.

Kingston Creative’s vision is that Kingston is the creative capital of the Caribbean.

Kingston Creative is an artist-led organisation powered by 100 volunteers, that serves creatives and the community of Downtown Kingston.

Kingston Creative is focused on creating a healthy ecosystem for the creative industries.

Kingston Creative seeks to catalyze growth in the creative economy and sees the cultural and creative industries as a key area for sustainable national development.

Key components of the Kingston Creative vision are place making, skills training, space and the provision of resources to help the creative community thrive.

Place making: Developing the Downtown Kingston Art District; a vibrant location for visitors and local residents with arts events, a cluster of creative businesses, murals and public art.

Skills training: Through its suite of free training programmes, Kingston Creative offers nationally recognised certificate courses in business and digital skills that enable creatives to leverage technology to grow their businesses and access global markets.

Space: Creatives can access space for performance, retail and coworking, through the Artisan Collective store, Creative Hub and other partners in Downtown. The Hub is a space for the development of creative entrepreneurs so that they can improve their business skills and take their enterprises global. It includes workshops and training for creatives, digital, podcast and dance studios, incubators and accelerators, equipment for rent and retail spaces for creative products.

Resources: Kingston Creative provides financial resources in the form of payment for artistic services, grants and investments for community projects and directly to individual artists, companies and entrepreneurs.

Kingston Creative conducts continuous community outreach, amplifying the work of existing Downtown-based community based organisations, cultural practitioners and cultural spaces like Tivoli Gardens, Trench Town, Life Yard, Boys Town Foundation and Sounds & Pressure.

Kingston Creative is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network and advocates for international recognition and support of the new Downtown Kingston Art District and the Creative City.

Kingston Creative has developed 63 murals, supported the development of sculpture and other public art, hosted a monthly festival called the Kingston Creative Artwalk, held open air artisanal markets called Market Street, and conducted tours of cultural spaces in Downtown Kingston. This work is transforming the area of Downtown Kingston.

Kingston Creative has increased the number of visitors to Downtown and the spend with businesses in the area. The past three years has seen over 29,000 visitors to Downtown to participate in events and Artwalks.

Kingston Creative has created new arts spaces, for example the Creative Hub and Artisan Collective Store, but has also repurposed abandoned spaces in the city as arts performance venues.

Kingston Creative has delivered over 4000 free training opportunities to creatives, as the organisation seeks to build capacity in business and digital skills.

Kingston Creative is a vocal advocate for the cultural and creative industries, meeting with private sector, public sector and third sector stakeholders to increase the awareness of the power of the creative economy to achieve sustainable national development.

Kingston Creative has brought international attention and millions in international funding to the local creative economy. KC has presented at the ACP-EU Culture Ministers conference in Niger, the UNCTAD conference in Geneva, the GCDN convening in Singapore and attracted funding from the EU, World Bank and IDB.

UNESCO has declared 2021 the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development in recognition of the importance of the impact of the creative economy on national development.

Jamaica has a powerful brand that resonates with a global audience, and while Kingston is already incredibly vibrant from a cultural perspective, it lacks a developed creative ecosystem that enables creatives to grow and monetize their creative assets.

Kingston Creative, through its partners, is supporting the development of a healthy ecosystem with the places, spaces and resources needed to develop a thriving creative economy in Jamaica, and providing the skills training to allow creatives to expand their businesses locally and globally.

Kingston Creative believes that maximising our creative potential and transforming the old city of Downtown go hand-in-hand, guided by the underlying goal to make Jamaicans proud, confident and aware of the tangible value of what Jamaican creatives have to offer the world.

The Orange or Creative Economy is simply a set of economic activities upon which the ‘cultural and creative industries’ are based.

It includes animation, architecture, arts and crafts, design, fashion, festivals, film, photography, music, parties, visual and performing arts, publishing, research & development, software, gaming, electronic publishing, TV/radio and sport – they are the lifeblood of our culture and of the creative economy.

The Creative Economy is also considered an important source of not only commercial but also intangible cultural and social value.

The creative economy employed nearly 30 million people worldwide and generated $2.253 trillion in revenue—or 3% percent of the world’s GDP in 2015. This is substantially more than the global telecommunications industry and greater than the GDP of India, Russia, or Canada.

The creative economy in Jamaica is valued at J$84.1 billion according to the Ministry of Finance (2020). Work is underway with the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce to finalise an Economic Impact Analysis that will provide further data on the value of the industry.

Across the globe, the creative industries are among the most dynamic, high growth sectors in the world economy providing new opportunities for developing countries like Jamaica to leapfrog into emerging areas of the world economy.