Basseterre, St. Kitts (SKNIS): Creatives in St. Kitts and Nevis are strongly encouraged to position themselves to capitalise on the opportunities being created by the growth of the Orange Economy as an essential pillar in the journey to become a sustainable island state.

Jihan Williams-Knight, Registrar of the Intellectual Property Office of St. Kitts and Nevis (IPOSKN), noted that success will only be achieved if persons recognise that the talent, creativity and innovation within creatives are used as building blocks to create foundations for the future.

“It’s important for us then to pay attention to how you can utilise those things using the intellectual property system to advance yourself,” Mrs. Williams Knight stated, on the May 01, 2024 edition of the radio and television programme InFocus. “So if you are into music, it is going to be important for you to understand copyright, and the business side of the entertainment industry so that you can understand things like publishing, and royalties, performances and split sheets and all these different things that come up because this is the basis on which you are going to get paid.”

Registrar Williams-Knight indicated that the change in mindset means that local artistes must no longer be content with just producing a music video and uploading it to YouTube.

“That’s not enough,” she emphasised. “So if we recognise then that there is a framework in place that can help us to benefit, it really is important for us to understand that framework, and understand where we fall and what we have to do to make sure that we can benefit.”

“The cool thing to recognise from intellectual property is you just need you, to start at least. You don’t need property, you don’t need these things, and this is the basis on which the orange economy is based. This is the creativity, the innovation, the songwriting, the fashion design, things that you just visualise in your head, and you just make it, and somebody buys it,” the registrar stated.

Mrs. Williams-Knight expressed that this formula will help to create “a strong orange economy built on innovation, creativity, enterprise, helping people understand business, that this is going to be the way up for a lot of people in St. Kitts and Nevis, who perhaps may not have access to other property.”