Heritage and creative industries: a new path towards local development in central Cuba

Not only does the better use of our cultural heritage in favor of local socioeconomic development stand as a major premise of creative industries around the world, it also strengthens the existing structures and facilitates the communication of social values.

Such is one of the purposes of the Project Arte Plaza designed by the Office of the Historian of the City of Camagüey (OHCC) with financial support of the European NGOs OIKOS and CARE France.

Approved in 2019, the initiative aims to revitalize cultural life in this 500-year-old city through the exploitation of the patrimonial values of squares and parks in the oldest section of the city—declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2008—through cultural tourism offers and the development of artistic creativeness among its citizens.

The linking of creative industries with heritage management will allow the use of the so-called orange economy—a development model centered on cultural diversity and creativity as the pillars of social and economic transformation—to produce, promote, disseminate and market cultural, artistic and patrimonial goods, services and activities.

Scheduled until 2023, the implementation of this project is proof positive that culture, traditions, creativity and citizen participation have great potential for local development.

There are successful cases worldwide of cities whose GDP benefits from entrepreneurship at the level of creative industries projects. In Latin America, Colombia and Chile have placed the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) at the center of economic development and internationalization agendas, not only by incorporating formal measurements of national economic performance, but also by defining specific public policies to support their implementation.

According to a 2015 report submitted to the United Nations, that year the CCIs generated profits in excess of two trillion dollars and more than 29 million jobs and counting, since the new technologies pave the way for other innovations and positive effects on the economy.

In the case of the city of Camagüey, Arte Plaza, albeit as yet unfinished, has remarkable potential to become one of the best in Cuba thanks to its inclusive and articulated management and its development of a direct relationship between heritage and city tourism for economic purposes.
With the aim of declaring Camagüey a creative city of literature, the OHCC is currently working on a dossier to be submitted to UNESCO for that purpose, an example of its clear intentions to continue promoting local culture.