The Creative Economy and Heritage Tourism in the Caribbean

Barbados - 31 July 2019

Trade topics: Tourism, Trade in ideas

The Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, combining both tangible and intangible cultural elements, is an active expression of cultural vibrancy and vehicle of cultural sustainability within the country, the region, and in the Caribbean diaspora internationally and an international tourism attraction. This chapter explores the way it has developed and spread and identifies the ways in which the synergies between the creative and tourism sectors are being exploited, critical success factors, best practices, and pitfalls. The chapter elaborates on two main themes: (i) how the Carnival is tightly linked to diasporic relations, trade and cultural vibrancy, and how the continual regeneration of these aspects underlines the carnival as central to cultural sustainability locally and internationally; and (ii) the continual and essential local involvement in the carnival activities, and whether there are tensions between the event as celebration of local culture, etc. vs. it as a tourism stage and powerful economic generator as well.
Edited by Nancy Duxbury, Culture, sustainability, and place: (Re)articulations in tourism contexts, Routledge Studies in Culture and Sustainable Development. 

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