The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has announced that it will provide the initial capitalisation for a multi-donor fund to improve the competitiveness of the cultural and creative industries sector in its borrowing member countries (BMCs). The Bank is making an initial contribution of USD2.6 million to the establishment of the Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund (CIIF) as a pilot intervention, and it will also administer the Fund.

The CIIF will support the development of the creative industries sector, and encourage innovation, job creation and improved enterprise sustainability by providing grants and technical assistance to governments, business support organisations and academia that support the creative industries sector. It will also provide funding to creative and cultural entrepreneurs and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in CDB’s BMCs.

“Currently, there is no clearly identified regional financing regime for the creative industries in the Caribbean and, with each country specialising in different creative industries sub-sectors, prioritising and allocating support has been challenging. Our investment towards the establishment of the CIIF aims to address this challenge, and gives further momentum to an ongoing regional effort to harness the power and potential of the creative industries in the Caribbean,” said Daniel Best, Director of Projects, CDB.

The objectives of the CIIF are to:

• support the enabling environment for the development of the cultural industries sector in BMCs with a focus on legislative reforms and incentive policies;
• improve the quality, depth and dissemination of research on the sector, and to strengthen the existing knowledge infrastructure related to cultural industries;
• enhance the technical capacity and knowledge of MSMEs in the cultural industries sector to improve their competitiveness to participate in local, regional and international markets; and
• strengthen business support organisations that support the cultural industries to deliver capacity building at national and regional levels in CDB’s BMCs.

The CIIF will primarily support projects identified in the priority sub-sectors: music, including production, distribution, sales and events; audio-visual, film, interactive media, animation and gaming/digital; fashion, and contemporary design; and festivals and carnivals.

The Fund will comprise three components which will focus on supporting the enabling environment, the development of sector data and market intelligence and supporting MSMEs in the CIs sector to develop new products/services, implement new business models, improve employee and managerial capacity and access new markets.

Governments, international organisations, and private sector entities will be able to contribute to CIIF to further facilitate the provision of capital to the creative industries sector.