CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution (CTWD), a distribution platform for Caribbean film and television content, has received a three-year funding commitment to provide eight partial scholarships a year to regional audiovisual content producers to attend its CaribbeanTales Incubator Programme, the organisation said in a press release.
The funding is provided by the Reach Project—an initiative of the Inter-American Development Bank in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization, Compete Caribbean, and the Young Americas Business Trust—which aims to develop sustainable income streams through the monetisation of intellectual property.
“CTWD’s impressive work in the Caribbean region is perfectly aligned with the Reach’s goals in improving the monetisation capabilities of producers of creative content,” the release quotes Ignacio L De Leon, Innovation lead specialist, IDB, as saying. “The Caribbean region is bursting with creative talent, which, with guided mentorship and assistance, can turn creative intellectual assets into strategic tools for generating and maximising new revenue streams. We look forward to a fruitful partnership.”
Now in its sixth year, the incubator is a year-round programme that supports the development, production, and monetisation of strong, original, world-class content from the Caribbean and its diaspora. The programme, which kicks off every year during the Toronto International Film Festival, is a training and production platform that brings together audiovisual content producers to hone their craft and business skills in the context of an international market environment.
The competitive incubator programme, which has already hosted over 60 filmmakers from around the region and diaspora, has three distinct parts: it begins with one month of online market preparation followed by a week of intensive workshops and networking opportunities in Toronto during the film festival. This culminates in the Big Pitch, where participants pitch their developed projects to industry professionals over a Caribbean breakfast at the festival’s Bell Lightbox.
Finally, three winners graduate to the CTI Production Support phase, where they work with experienced international producers over the course of a year to take their successful projects from pitch to production.
“This groundbreaking partnership is a perfect fit with the goals of CTWD and in particular, the CaribbeanTales Incubator Programme: to monetise the intellectual property of audiovisual content producers, so as to encourage the growth of creative entrepreneurship throughout the Caribbean region and Diaspora,” said Dr Keith Nurse, chair of CTWD and one of the region’s leading cultural industries specialists.
The new funding builds on the work of CTWD’s 3D Distribution Project, a three-year initiative financed in part by the ACP Cultures+ Programme of the European Union. The 3D project aims to build capacity for the regional film and television industry through the creation of sustainable income streams and distribution networks.
“These trailblazing partnerships come at a time when the Caribbean region needs them most, offering a viable answer to the region’s core struggle—the need to diversify its economies and find alternatives to more traditional industries like agriculture, banking, and tourism” Nurse said in the release.