Jamaica Must Benefit Economically from Exporting Culture

The Minister of Youth and Culture the Hon. Lisa Hanna, has said she intends to ensure that Jamaica increased its foreign exchange earnings from its cultural content with the proper management and marketing of its products and content. Minister Hanna’s comments came today as she received a courtesy call from officials of the Creative Production and Training Centre (CPTC).

“I firmly believe that substantially increasing our foreign exchange earnings is a sure path to economic growth for Jamaica and I believe that right now we have a great opportunity to produce market and sell our cultural content to the world.”

Minister Hanna also said that the CPTC must consider broadening its basic training offerings to our young people into areas such as sound, lighting and film so that we can create a cadre of trained professionals for the development of our cultural industries both locally and internationally.

“And as we seek to aggressively market our culture internationally we must move to strengthen our agencies for increased productivity and efficiency.”

CPTC CEO Chantal Hylton-Tonnes told the Minister that the CPTC, which was being “revitalised” and was moving back to its “core mandate” which was to the produce and market “cultural content”. She said the CPTC was receiving considerable interest in material produced by the company in countries such as Japan and Australia. She told Minister Hanna that the company was creating cultural content to be sold overseas so that the company could become sustainable

Mrs. Hylton-Tonnes agreed with Minister Hanna that, “Jamaica’s culture was one of its most valuable assets.”

Mr. Christopher Samuda, Chairman of the CPTC, was also present at the meeting while Mr. Robert Martin, the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary; and its Principal Director for Culture, Mr. Sydney Bartley sat with the Minister.

Via – JIS