August 22, 2017, BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Building on the recent announcement of its provision of initial capitalisation for the Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Fund (CIIF), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) recently introduced the CIIF to approximately 100 cultural practitioners, policymakers and academics from across the Caribbean. The occasion was the Cultural Policy and Intellectual Property Rights Workshop, held as part of CARIFESTA XIII in Barbados on Sunday August 20, 2017, sponsored by CDB.
Lisa Harding, Private Sector Development Specialist, CDB, noted that the CIIF was developed to support an enabling environment for the development of the cultural industries sector, and could make the cost of doing business more affordable for Regional cultural practitioners.
“This Fund is born out of the fact that we recognise there’s a void in the financing ecosystem. There are gaps, especially in grant funding for creative industry entrepreneurs and stakeholders in general. We consulted with several stakeholders to come up with a model that we believe will help to support the sector. The areas which the Fund will cover are music, audio-visual, film, animation and gaming, fashion and design and festivals and carnivals,” said Harding.
