Robin Margetson (photo courtesy whensteeltalks)

By Carlena Knight

carlena.knight@antiguaobserver.com 

The creative industries – which include everything from steelpan to fashion design – will undergo a major data collection drive.

The culture mapping project is a UNESCO-funded initiative and will see information gathered to assess the sector’s economic impact in Antigua and Barbuda. The aim is to highlight the contribution creative industries make to national development, identify ways to increase participation in them, and lobby for more funding, among other things.

Project Manager of Antigua and Barbuda’s UNESCO International Fund for Cultural Diversity (IFCD) Dr Hazra Medica spoke to the importance of the project.

“How do you make policies? How do you decide how to invest in sectors and in industries where you have no idea about the basic things about the people practicing in the fields in this industry?” she told the Observer AM show.

“This is what this project is about. It’s about diversifying our development options. We have seen what the pandemic has done to our main industry. This has always been at the top of our agenda and it is even more important now to work on this project and ensure its complete success so that we fulfill that goal and improve things for cultural practitioners,” Dr Medica said. 

Director of Culture Khan Cordice also spoke to the relevance of the US$50,000 initiative. 

“We have no idea and when I say we, I mean as a country, have no idea what creative practitioners contribute,” he said.

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