Noticias del Portal de la Cultura de América Latina y el Caribe

The UNESCO Transcultura Programme joins the Kingston Culture Forum

21 September 2021/ UNESCO Havana

Kingston Creative (KC) will launch an annual summit this month, the Kingston Culture Forum. The Kingston Culture Forum is a conference convening cultural and creative industry stakeholders in the public, private, academic and social sectors. The theme for the event will be “Downtown Kingston: creative economy, placemaking and sustainable urban development”.

The first staging, scheduled for 24 September this year, aims to attract a wide audience with participation from local creatives, as well as regional and global participants. The Kingston Culture Forum will focus on centering cultural and creative dialogue on Downtown Kingston, building confidence in using technology for the sustainable preservation of cultural heritage and promotion of creative industries and to also advocate for a data-driven approach to cultural and creative industry policymaking.

In this framework, the UNESCO Transcultura Programme: Integrating Cuba, the Caribbean and the European Union through Culture and Creativity will harness the dialogue to raise awareness on key areas of cooperation and identify new opportunities to foster cultural entrepreneurship capacity-building, interregional collaboration and creative exchanges.

Transcultura is a four-year Programme, launched on 1 January 2020, funded by the European Union and implemented by the UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, that seeks to deepen integration between Cuba, the Caribbean and the European Union. It engages partners and targets direct and indirect beneficiaries within the geographic scope of the 17 Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) and the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS): Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Monserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Kingston Creative Culture Forum programme will include the following components:

• Museums, and heritage institutions and their role in preserving cultural memory in the digital age • Creative Placemaking and Urban Regeneration in Cultural and Creative Cities
• Policies for growing cultural and creative industries through the Festival/Experience economy
• Capacity building in communities: promoting creative industry and preserving heritage in at-risk communities
• Creative Partnership & Opportunity Pitch
• ‘CreaTech’: best practices in Creativity and Technology amongst creatives

Additionally, the event will feature an extensive list of esteemed guest speakers and a performance by “Sevana”, a Jamaican singer, actress, and model.

On behalf of UNESCO, the opening remarks will be given by Dr Saadia Sanchez-Vegas, Director and the UNESCO Representative to the UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean and Officer-in-Charge of the UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean on 24 September, 09:05 a.m. – 09:40 a.m. (GMT-4).

You can register to follow the UNESCO opening remarks here

Also, representing the UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean implemented Transcultura Programme, a keynote presentation will be shared with the audience by Alessandra Borchi, the Programme Coordinator, as part of the panel: “Creative Partnerships & Opportunity Pitch” to take place from 03:30 p.m. – 04:30 p.m. (GMT-4) on the same day.

You can register to follow the UNESCO Transcultura Programme keynote presentation here

Given the importance of the cultural and creative industries to the vitality of Jamaica and the region, Kingston Creative wants to address the global challenges, and consider the role that technology, enabled by public-private-third sector partnerships, will play in sustainable development through preserving cultural heritage and promoting the creative industry.