TOWARDS A CREATIVE ECONOMY POLICY PAPER
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru. Not published in Business Daily April 7, 2014 as the editor said conferences in Kenya were common-place and not 'newsworthy'. Disappointing but at least i can share the story here.
Someone once said that any Kenyan
holding a beggar bowl was a fool since he was already standing on a gold mine.
It was a
line (badly paraphrased) shared last weekend at a forum filled with ‘creatives’,
professionals concerned with the arts and cultural affairs—some from
government, some scholars and the rest activists involved in Kenya’s growing
‘creative economy.’
The
gathering, organized by the Godown Art Centre and Twaweza Communications with
support from Ford Foundation, was a ‘Strategy Forum for the Kenya Creative
Economy’, and the gold mine was meant to be understood as Kenya’s rich culture
heritage as well as its contemporary creative economy which the speaker was
suggesting has immense wealth-potential but which has yet to be tapped.
How to tap
into that wealth-potential in order to grow the Kenyan economy as well as raise
public awareness about the value of Kenya’s creative economy was the focus of
the forum.
Its long-term
goal was clear from the outset: It was to create a draft creative economy
policy paper that might one day get presented to the Kenya government and then
passed into law.
But in the
short term, the forum was mainly about brainstorming with an impressive lot of
creative Kenyans in order to begin crafting a practical policy paper with input
from various sectors. They included representatives of various government
ministries as well as ones from the arts, media and IT communities.
The first step
in the process was defining exactly what we mean by ‘creative economy’,
especially as not everyone understands that the arts, culture and creativity
generally have immense value which is
not just aesthetic; it’s also economic.
Then there
was defining the rationale for why it was important to construct a creative
economy policy that government could use. Thereafter there was listing of all
the benefits that could accrue if the government came around to
appreciating—and supporting--the role this sector can play in enhancing the
country’s GDP.
Finally, there
was an extensive discussion on the role that new media or IT can play in
protecting Kenyans’ original creations through the use of copyright law and
patents. In the process, what became clear is that IT is an integral part of
the creative economy.
But so are a
wide variety of other artistic and intellectual initiatives including
everything from fashion, book publishing, music, dance and drama to
architecture, food, film, sculpture and storytelling to photography, poetry,
puppetry, painting and even software development.
What
constitutes the creative economy is even more extensive, and countries like the
UK and assorted agencies of the United Nations have begun documenting its
annual material value and acknowledging that in future, the economic value of
countries’ creative economy is bound to grow.
What was
beautiful about the process of brainstorming during a brief two and a half day
period in Naivasha was that the forum’s moderator and TC CEO, Dr Kimani Njogu
got small groups working concurrently on each of those policy issues: one
working on a definition, another on rationale and benefits, and the other
identifying the overlap between the IT sector and the creative economy.
It was
wonderfully efficient use of time; but the format had all been pre-planned by
an ad hoc Creative Economy Working Group that agreed to keep the forum relatively
small, but filled with dynamic creative practitioners, both governmental and
non-governmental.
For
instance, the Kenya Drama Festival director Sirengo Khaembe was on hand as was
Dr. Donald Otoyo, head of the music department at the Technical University of
Kenya, Ndua Chege from the Ministry of Culture, and Keziah Odemba from the
Ministry of Tourism. The GoDown was represented by Joy Mboya, Judy Ogana and
Garnette Olunya and the Ford Foundation by Rosemary Okello-Orlale. There were
also filmmakers, fine artists, thespians, writers, publishers, and IT activists
among the brain-stormers.
At the end
of two and a half days, one felt the forum had only scratched the surface of
what the creative economy means to Kenya’s development process. Nonetheless, a
Creative Economy policy draft was practically put together. It will still
require more refining and clarifying, which will be done during a follow-up
conference to be held in September.
But everyone
in attendance at the Great Rift Valley Lodge felt the group had gone a long
way, not only in understanding how rich Kenya’s creative economy already is;
but also how much potential it has to contribute significantly to solving many
of the country’s pressing problems, such as unemployment and poverty.
The key is
appreciating that creativity and the imaginative powers of the mind can work
wonders for the Kenyan economy.
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