Transcultura Programme seeks to insert cultural and creative industries in Caribbean tourism

By Daily Pérez Guillén

Kishlane Smith creates monumental costumes out of cardboard, crepe paper, aluminum rods, tie wire, contact cement and lots of glue which are displayed at the Junkanoo, a  national cultural festival of the Bahamas. Krumah Herelle is a tour operator at Pitons, two volcanic spires that rise side by side from the sea over 700 meters high joined by the Piton Mitan ridge in St. Lucia. Jaime A. Ramón Morales coordinates the Free Walking Tour local development project in Havana to show visitors around the city free of charge. Leidys Hernández Lima, also from Cuba, together with her partner and other artists, makes Cuban punto music visible through the Oralitura Habana project. They and other young people from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname and Trinidad presented their projects at the International Tourism Fair for World Heritage Sites in Genoa, where they  explained how they are linked to tourism and the creative and cultural industries.

Participants came to the Italian city through UNESCO’s Transcultura programme, which is funded by the European Union. In a panel during the last day of the event, Anne Lemaistre, regional director of the United Nations agency, explained that this initiative is responsibly developed based on the preservation of heritage sites. “Through dialogue and cooperation, we seek to insert the cultural and creative industries into the tourism sector so that they can be reflected in sustainable tourism in the Caribbean,” she said.

Bernhard Bauer, a consultant for Transcultura, presented statistics showing how the programme prioritizes lesser-known heritage resources and sites whose greatest beneficiaries are the young people of the communities where they are located.

Narandera Ramgulam, sustainable tourism consultant for the Caribbean Tourism Organization, pointed out the regional challenge to achieve that goal, as the sector is not only mediated by investments, but also by the local way of life and the impacts of tourism. “With globalization, the habits of Western culture have an impact on local traditions.”

That is why  Krumah Herelle, the young man from St. Lucia, highlights the value of the Transcultura programme for future generations.

The Caribbean is home to 14 World Heritage Cultural Properties, six Intangible Cultural Heritage Practices and Expressions and eight urban centers that are part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network. The Transcultura programme extends to 17 nations in the region and seeks to impact 34 key resources, two for each country.

The Caribbean delegation in Genoa included members of heritage site management teams, tourism authorities, young cultural professionals, as well as creative tourism entrepreneurs based in World Heritage properties.