C
A
R
I
B
B
E
A
N
C
R
E
A
T
I
V
E
S
Table 1: Key Bene?ts to be derived from Gathering Festival Statistics
Artistic/Cultural Development
• can encourage artistic excellence • can foster greater artistic expression • can determine socio-cultural bene?ts to the local community • can assess level of international exposure for local artists
Economics/Industrial Development
• data can be used to strengthen the position and image of the country, region or city • can be used to assess the performance of festival in generating economic bene?ts over a period of time • can be used to assess the performance of the festival in expanding tourism • can establish bene?ts versus costs • can be used to assess stimulation of local economy • can prove return on public investment • can be used to assess return on private sector investment • can be used to justify funding given for cultural research initiatives
Festival Economics in the Caribbean Festivals have become more prominent in the Caribbean since the mid-1990s as part of the drive to o?er a more diversi?ed tourism product. Consequently, the small but growing body of festival economics research in the region to date has largely focused on exploring and justifying the role of festivals as a platform for tourism diversi?cation. Festival economics also serves as a catalyst for economic development. Empirical studies on: Grenada s Spice Mas (Nurse and Tull 2012); Dominica s World Creole Music Festival (Nurse and Tull 2004); Cayman Islands Pirates Week (Nurse and Tull 2003); the Trinidad Carnival (Tull 2005, Nurse 2003); the St. Kitts Music Festival (Sahely and Skerrit 2003) and Jamaica s Reggae Sunsplash (Nurse 2002) all focused on gathering festival statistics. From this, key economic impacts were decided and critical success factors identi?ed to help realize more sustainable tourism-oriented bene?ts and economic returns. Festival data derived from these studies included: festival size in terms of patron attendance, visitor expenditure, patron spend, revenue generation, foreign exchange earnings generated by the festival to estimate the festival s contribution to GDP and employment levels. The studies have also been able to generate speci?c tourism impact data such as visitor preference, length of stay and accommodation type and visitor expenditure beyond the festivals.
continued on page 20 Volume 5 July - September 2013 www.creativeindustriesexchange.com
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