Business View Caribbean | July 2020

25 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN JULY 2020 DBJ and TEF funded Joint Venture stimulates Creative Entrepreneurship K ingston Jamaica – The first Creative Hub in Jamaica will open its doors on Monday July 27, 2020 in Downtown Kingston at the old Swiss Stores Building at 107 Harbour Street. The restaurant, wine bar, retail and gallery space is downstairs, and upstairs is the new Hub space, a partnership between the Hub Coworking Ltd. and arts and culture charity, Kingston Creative. A Creative Hub is defined as ‘a space that brings together people who work in the creative and cultural industries’. There is estimated to be 2.2 million people working from coworking spaces globally. These people are generally self-employed, MSMEs and freelancers, who now represent 70% of global employment. Creative Hubs are critical to the development of a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem as they encourage cross disciplinary collaboration through an active programme of workshops, seminars, hackathons, accelerators and fun networking events. The goal of the Creative Hub is to promote collaboration across the creative sector, catalyse growth in the creative economy and to explore “Createch”; what happens at the intersection of creativity and technology. The hub will focus on the impact that augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain and other emerging digital technologies can have on the culture and talent that exists in Jamaica. There are six different types of Hubs: 1. Studio - a small group of individuals/small businesses in a co-working space 2. Centre - A large building which may have other assets like a cafe, bar, or gallery 3. Network - A dispersed group of individuals or businesses, physical or virtual 4. Cluster - Co-located creative individuals and business in a geographic area JAMAICA SET TO OPEN FIRST CREATIVE HUB IN DOWNTOWN KINGSTON OPENING L INES Photo courtesy of Shauna-Kaye Campbell