Kingston Creative, IDB provide enabling environment for Creatives

Kingston Creative and the Inter-American Development Bank have collaborated to provide an enabling environment to support Jamaican creative entrepreneurs.

Cofounder & Executive Director of Kingston Creative, Andrea Dempster Chung, says this has been facilitated through CreaTech, a new digital movement for creativity.

Chung described CreaTech on #MoneyMovesJa with Kalilah Reynolds as the intersection of creativity and technology. Linking the movement to similar platforms like Fintech (Financial Technology) and MedTech (Medical Technology), she said CreaTech aims to use technology to drive the raw natural talent of local creatives going forward.

“CreaTech is just exploring artificial intelligence and how that can drive different aspects, like augmented reality, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain; how things will distribute products differently in the backend and also to deliver to an audience in a different way,” she said.

Chung said CreaTech was formed out of the need for programmes to support the growth of stakeholders in the creative industry. IDB will be sponsoring the partnership for three years

“We found that there just weren’t these supporting environments for creatives. It seemed they were just viewing it as though your raw talent will carry you and so we said no, we need to put that enabling environment in place,” she said.

Training and certification

Under CreaTech, Chung said the Heart NSTA Trust has also come on board as a partner to offer creatives free training and certification in business and digital skills for three years. Chung said this training is timely especially with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many industries to pivot to the digital world.

Chung added that they are also partnering with Heart to develop a certification programme for pricing to ensure creatives can make money and are not underpricing their services.

“It’s really free training and certification because we really think inclusion and access is so important. We find that creatives in Jamaica have a lot of raw talent but what they don’t have is the knowledge of how to scale the business, how to make your strategy, and these are the things being taught. There are courses in intellectual property, entrepreneurship, social media, digital marketing,” she said.

Chung said there’s also a business and intellectual property registration drive now underway in partnership with the Companies Office and the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) to help creatives keep their products safe and protected. She said registration will also provide these creatives with access to the raft of funding opportunities currently available in the space.

“We think formalization is so important,” said Chung, who also stated that persons who sign up stand to get as much as JM$12,500 in cash back. She said the cash back incentive applies to all registration categories.

“So you basically go to a course, talk to an advisor, figure out what you need to register, complete your registration at JIPO or companies office and then we reimburse you and we’re even changing it a bit to see that maybe you don’t have to pay first,” she said.

Upcoming initiatives

Meanwhile, as part of the partnership, creatives also stand to benefit from networking with other creative businesses through a Hackathon. Chung said more creatives will also be vying for support at another Best Pitch Forward competition.

“150 creatives are trained how to pitch and how to package ideas in an investibile product and then the best pitchers get to go on a live pitch before the judges and then they actually get cash, some seed capital to take them from their ideas,” she said. “Those who do not emerge as winners also have the opportunity to be taken up in private sessions by the investors,” she added.

Additionally, for the next three years, the partnership between Kingston Creative and the IDB will see two entrepreneurs being sent off to another country to a partner incubator to make market connections.

“Sometimes you don’t know how to break into a market if you’ve never travelled to the place, and don’t understand how it works,” said Chung.

Chung said the activities under CreaTech remain open to any creative with the aim being to catalyze the development and growth of the creative economy.

Later this year, Kingston Creative will also host a Kingston Culture Forum to bring stakeholders together to foster the achievement of that objective.

To participate in the forum, creatives can visit www.kingstoncreative.org up to September to register.

Visit EXIM Bank’s Business Advisory Service at:
https://eximbankja.com