HOW can we transition from a creative industry to a creative economy? This was essentially the question that paved the way for the third and final panel discussion with stakeholders in the creative industry during the last day of the Origins: Guyana Fashion Festival on Sunday.
The expert panel of men consisted of fashion designers Randy Madray and Isaiah Luther, distinguished Caribbean Jurist, legal scholar, and cultural advocate, Professor Courtney Able, attorney-at law Joshua Benn, and creative entrepreneur, musician, and hospitality professional Andrew “Drew Thoven” King.
The panelists dove headfirst into this topic highlighting challenges and solutions to each. They stated that the creative industry speaks to the way in which a product is produced (brands and so on). The creative industry, like any other, focuses on the functions, the productions, and speaks directly to the creative processes whether it is music or fashion. The creative economy deals with how they commercialise those products.
The creative economy, they said, also speaks about putting creativity at the centre of the economy and governance, and requires the involvement of creatives to inform not only policy but also the community about the importance of creativity.
Madre said that when he hears the word “economy” he thinks about generating revenue and sustainability. He opined that there’s no reason to add the word economy unless it is sustainable and will consistently be developed.
“Like my fellow panelists would have said, the creative economy speaks about commercialising the industry. How do we generate revenue? How do we sustain that, and how do we continuously generate better revenue annually to the point where it directly impacts the overall economy?” Madray said adding, “Because within an industry you can generate revenue, but how does that impact all of Guyana? How does that filter down? There’s all the talk about the impact of oil on the economy, and I think we need to start looking at it the same way. This is our oil, this is the oil of the creative industry, or creativity, or intellectual property,”
According to the knowledgeable panel, some of the limiting factors would be the current systems in place. While noting that the government is doing a good job at leading the sector in the area it needs to be in, they said that understanding the business side of the creative industry is something designers need to have.
King pointed out that there is another “dimension” that is often overlooked or perhaps even forgotten in these conversations: “we have a framework, a structure, we have now an injection, and we have an economy that is now setting up, but we are still, as creatives, the driving force, and still I think we have to, aside from talent, talent is like 20 per cent of your outcome, it’s less than 50 per cent. The real work is the discipline, the real work is the mastery of selling, and I often don’t hear that a lot in conversations,”
Adding to this, the young creative said that part of the reasons why creatives have gotten so far is because at one point along the way, they would have had to master themselves in terms of discipline, diet, and other factors.
King asserted that if everyone in the creative industry continues to develop themselves while the creative economy is being set up and the government is continuing to put measures in place, when it does come to fruition, they will be better equipped to function in those spaces.
“It gets deeper, but that’s something that I think we need to remember moving forward, because the government could continue to do all of these great things, and if we don’t become the people to accept it and to make something out of it, it’s worthless,” King said.
Adding to this, Luther remarked that what separates Guyana from the fashion capitals of the world is self.
“Like you said before, identity. When you look at Trinidad and you look at all the other Caribbean countries, I’m not saying that we don’t know who we are, but I think we kind of piggyback on everything else. So, I think, like, now specifically, when we look at the designers, we’re now coming into who we are as Guyanese,” he remarked.
Speaking from legal standpoints, Benn shared that one thing that needs to be understood is that the laws exist. He said Guyana has copyright, trademark and patent laws in place. However, these are outdated, he pointed out later positing that in modernising these laws, there needs to be consultations with stakeholders.
Meanwhile, Abel stated that what is important in all of this is legal reform.
“Sometimes we think that just changing the law changes everything, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t, because at the end of the day, if it doesn’t change the political and legal morality, if values are not effective, then nothing changes. You can change the statute books, nothing changes. So I agree with you completely when you say that the emphasis shouldn’t just be about changing laws, although they need to change, and we need to have a discussion among the people who will be affected most by creatives, but what’s important is we have to begin to see ways in which we can change the value systems, which underlie the whole business of copyright exploiting other people’s creativity, that is something that we have to focus on,” he expressed.