Kingston Creative plans to further expand its murals outside of Kingston this year via new public art projects, as part of growing the mural eco-system.
“The arts festival, training and murals slated for 2026 in Montego Bay will be one such example of scaling and expanding to new locales, signalling the potential for creative placemaking and sector building beyond the capital,” company executive director Andrea Dempster Chung told the Financial Gleaner.
So far, the organisation which started nine years ago, has painted 118 murals across Jamaica, providing jobs, grants and other benefits to creatives across the Caribbean.
Economic impact
The organisation disbursed well over $100 million in grants and benefits to over 1,700 creatives from 27 Caribbean countries since inception. This is through its pitch competitions, travel, business registration and consultancy grants as well as emergency COVID-relief and Hurricane Melissa-Creative Resilience programmes.
Individual mural commissions have ranged from $1 million to $2.5 million, generating what executive director Andrea Dempster Chung describes as “unprecedented levels of income generation” for emerging artists. At the September 2025’s Artwalk Festival, more than 100 artisans and 30 performers collectively generated “millions in fees and earnings in a single day”, Dempster Chung told Financial Gleaner.
The organisation’s Artwalk Festival, launched in 2018, draws thousands of visitors to downtown Kingston. The event contributed to the district earning “World’s Best Creative Destination” in 2023 from a field of 152 global applicants.
Downtown renewal
More recently, Kingston Creative secured $23 million in new funding for the upgrading of the Art District, with corporate donors including Barita, Gore, National Bakery, Digicel Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers each contributing $3 million in July 2024, according to media reports. The Bank of Jamaica also pledged $15 million over three years for the management and development of the art district. The organisation operates through partnerships with government agencies, multilateral donors and private corporations.
Kingston Creative’s impact extends well beyond cultural tourism and renewal of Downtown. The organisation has helped 130 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to register businesses and intellectual property. While the Inter-American Development Bank via its innovation lab invested US$1.3 million over three years, in the Kingston Creative-led Createch programme, which benefited more than 1,500 creative entrepreneurs and winning the IDB ‘Excellence in Project Execution’ Award in 2023. Data are also a key output. The Creative Cultural Industry Alliance of Jamaica, co-founded by Kingston Creative, conducted surveys and reported in July 2025. It found that Jamaica’s creative industries reportedly contributes $107 billion annually, representing 5.1 per cent of national GDP. The study was conducted by Bluedot and United Nations data.
