C
A
R
I
B
B
E
A
N
C
R
E
A
T
I
V
E
S
Barbados’ Creative Economy in Perspective
Keith Nurse The Caribbean region, for decades, has produced many globally recognizable artists and cultural events that have generated global reach beyond what the region’s size would suggest. Barbados is no exception. The recent and sustained success of global pop icon, Rihanna, is testimony to this. However, the issue at hand is how does this success translate into economic realities for the wider economy and the population of Barbados. The cultural or creative industries have emerged to be a key growth sector in the Caribbean economy through its contribution to the GDP, exports, employment and intellectual property earnings. In Barbados, on account of the wide array of festivals (e.g. Crop Over) and cultural events, the cultural sector has a signi?cant spillover effect on the wider economy; especially on tourism arrivals and destination branding, as well as a major impact on the media, retail, food and beverage, ground transport, hotel and airline sectors. Barbados, like most Caribbean countries, has a signi?cant de?cit in the trade of cultural goods. As Figure 1 illustrates, exports of creative goods are at best one-third of imports based on data for 2008, which is the most recent year of data. Imports have ?uctuated in the period 2005 to 2008 with a peak in 2005 at US$94 million. What this means is that Barbados imports more CD, DVDs, books, magazines and paintings than it exports. This should be of no surprise to anyone familiar with the sector and its declining capabilities in the artisanal and manufacturing arena. It is also well recognized that the collection of data on goods exports tends to be weak and consequently does not accurately re?ect total exports for the sector. The scenario for Barbados is not unlike that of other Caribbean countries with the exception of Dominican Republic as exempli?ed in Figure 2.
Figure 1: Creative Goods Exports & Imports Barbados 2005 - 2008 ($M)
Figure 2: Caribbean Creative Goods Imports & Exports 2006 ($M)
Continued on next page
Volume 2 January - March 2011
www.creativeindustriesexchange.com
3