OECS film, music practitioners wrap up two-day conference

Some of the Eastern Caribbean’s leading film and music practitioners wrapped up a two-day conference on the creative industries last week Friday, with agreement to work together, through the coordination of the OECS Secretariat, to make the sector a major pillar of economic development.{{more}}

The two day conference at Young Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, organized by the OECS Secretariat, brought the regional film and music practitioners face to face with top film and music studio owners and operators from Canada and the United States.

The international practitioners have offered to mobilize their own networks to work along with their Caribbean counterparts and the Secretariat to establish an annual OECS Film festival, while making technical and other resources available to support productions by the region’s fledgling film companies.

OECS Director General Dr. Len Ishmael has also pledged the Secretariat’s commitment to coordinate, in association with international providers, training in business management, promotion techniques and other requirements for artistes and performers wishing to manage their own careers or wanting to know what is involved in the business side of their operations.

The Secretariat has committed to providing a server for artistes to upload their music and video productions for more effective distribution to a wider market base. A four-member group of artistes has volunteered to develop and maintain the site. The Secretariat has also offered to make its overseas offices in Ottawa, Brussels and Geneva available to the artistes for promotion and distribution assistance.

The conference expressed the need for an OECS Cultural Desk, and for governments in the respective islands to create a package of incentives for the creative industries, and establish a development fund for the sector.

The creative industries were put into the spotlight for this conference because the OECS Secretariat felt that while there have been some developments in the sector these have been ad hoc and the conference was designed to devise a Plan of Action for a more structured and comprehensive development of the sector.