THE Jamaican Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport launched the Jamaica Entertainers and Creatives Insurance Plan (JECIP) on November 12, 2024.

It is a highly anticipated and commendable initiative that came out of the need to shore-up Jamaican creatives who suffered bitterly from the sector shutdown during the COVID-19 Pandemic. As I told the Minister at the launch, anything that positively impacts Jamaica’s culture, creative economy, and its practitioners is a welcome addition to the landscape and is a good thing. However a deeper dive is always important.

The Jamaica Entertainers and Creatives and Insurance Plan will provide Life and Health Insurance coverage of one-million Jamaican dollars per person, for the 4,425 members of the Entertainment Registry. The Government will spend 55 million dollars from the Consolidated Fund within its budget to provide policies, free of cost, to entertainment and creative practitioners listed on the registry. The introduction of the insurance scheme is, however, the perfect example of a point I have been making for 15 years as I explored the world of cultural economy development.

JECIP will certainly bring benefit to the sector, is well-needed and of immediate utility to cultural and creative practitioners. That is why it has been launched now. It is also an isolated programme being implemented without a clear policy framework. This seems to be Jamaica’s lot — the fierce urgency of now alongside meek complacency for a sustainable future.

JECIP is an important early step in formalising a relationship between the finance and creative sectors in Jamaica. This is never an easy one to broker, worldwide. This insurance scheme is not only a wonderful gift to our creatives, but it also guarantees the payment to, minimising the risk of the underwriters, Guardian Life Insurance Brokers. The technical team at the ministry exhibited mastery in its design, given the parameters, expectations and urgency. JECIP is certainly a welcome start; however, it may struggle to maintain its sustainability in its current configuration. An additional, optional contribution feature within the insurance plan, allowing policyholders to match the government’s contribution to enhance their benefits might address this. This is, if of course, the sustainable benefit to practitioners beyond the gift in a pivotal year, is the main objective of the announcement of the insurance scheme at this time.

Beyond the well needed benefits all around, to really grow the cultural and creative sector sustainably requires a policy vision and implementation plan that encourages, enables and even incentivises all our financial partners to embrace culture and creativity as business. The objective must be working together with financiers to find solutions to minimise both precarity for the creative practitioners, and risk for the financial institutions. This requires working together towards the development of financial instruments that sustainably respond to the financial nuances and precarity of the cultural and creative sector; a project I proposed that should be implemented through UNESCO’s ongoing Creative Caribbean Grant Programme (2021).

Why doesn’t Jamaica have a modern policy for its growing, changing and increasingly complex creative ecosystem? A framework for its development was produced in 2015. This policy framework spoke to “simultaneous implementation” of urgent isolated programmes that will benefit the sector like this insurance scheme. It took into account the questions of urgency, but within planned, strategic, logistical and logical implementation.

In 2017, and again in 2019, efforts were made at continuity, to develop the policy further. In 2020 COVID-19 struck, decimating the sector. It was the perfect opportunity to pivot as the technological changes matched digital with creative and altered the creative business model significantly. In 2021, the idea of omnibus legislation was introduced. In 2024, the process is said to be close to completion, but separated from an entertainment policy. I anticipate that, perhaps, it is the entertainment policy that relates directly to this insurance scheme. The point is, we do not know what the direction is.

There is already evidence that absence of holistic policy can become a bugbear that hinders the insurance plan’s effectiveness and sustainability. At the launch, most of the questions came from creative workers unsure of where they fit within the entertainment, culture and creative industries (ECCI), and whether they qualify for Government initiatives like this insurance scheme. Why? Because the ministry has failed in its ‘macro’ policy obligations to name, classify and publish the range and configuration of subsectors and industries within what it calls the ECCI.

Simply put, many creatives have no idea where they fit in the current Jamaican ECCI. Additionally, because different ministries, departments and agencies of Government have varied configurations of the ECCI, fragmented public service and public information delivery for the sector is more confounding than it is enabling. Using this insurance scheme as an example, creative practitioners, beyond those on the ministry’s mailing list or a viral post will have difficulty determining whether, and how, they might benefit from this or any other programme that is to their advantage.

The requirements of the scheme have also not taken into account the phase of development of the sector. For creatives to benefit from the scheme, they must be members of a professional organisation. Individuals from new and emerging creative fields like pyrotechnics, independent media, and social media management are not yet “formally” recognised in the sector as industries. They do not have professional associations, simply because they are so new. The answer to inquiries is “call the office for guidance”. While this is a legitimate customer service opening, surely addressing queries on a case-by-case basis is not sustainable. Nor is it the most efficient use of national resources. Public information including the sector configuration is necessary. Effective public information about the scheme, beyond publicity posts about the insurance scheme launch must be a priority.

The insurance scheme’s main requirement that cultural and creative practitioners be compliant members of the ministry’s entertainment registry is intended to increase membership, encourage compliance and formalise the sector. This also raises concerns about the scheme’s capacity, and the question of whether the addition of a large number of new people to the registry might limit access to benefits to the people it is meant to serve under the current budget and in its current form.

The long-awaited policy is imminent, I understand. Consultation on the full document is necessary. It has taken nine years from framework to policy and plan of action for the cultural and creative economy, if it lands this year. I do hope it is progressive and sustainable, supports the industries, protects its workers, enables wealth creation, and promotes sectoral growth. In the interim, there is a need to think through, from a policy perspective, the steps to be taken to improve the lives of creative practitioners in Jamaica. Until then, we remain unsure of the fullness of the direction we are taking.

We look forward to learning.

Dr Deborah Hickling Gordon is a two-term member of the UNESCO Expert Facility on the Diversity of Cultural Expression; coordinator of UWI Mona’s Bachelor of Arts in Cultural and Creative Industries; and the PNP spokesperson on culture and creative industries.