Page 18 - AHATA

A14 LOCAL
Thursday 29 November 2018

Creativity, the 21st century skill to have?

Maastricht – Alongside our introduction last time to the economic
impact of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), today we will
explore the implication of the current time when it comes to employ-
ability with an eye towards the future. Last time, we discovered as-
pects of the Orange Economy and how this relates to possibly diver-
sifying the Aruban economy. Next to this, we also looked at how the
value chain for the CCI looks like and what contribution the Aruban
community could have within these developments.

The focus on the economic impact is directly affected by the em-
ployment opportunities of a community. An outcome of primary
importance may be the boost to the local economy generated by
the cultural industries, reflected in such indicators as the value of re-
gional output, employment, business investments, skills development
in the workforce and growth in diverse sectors. According to World
Economic Forum (WEF), creativity will be one of the top three skills to
have for the 2020 job market. My question, maybe yours as well, are
we prepared for this shift?

In the beginning of our journey together, we learned the extensive-
ness and the diversity of the CCI. So, this also creates job and career
opportunities in numerous niche markets such as publishing, design,
multimedia, telecommunication, entertainment, writing, arts, music
industry, advisory and consulting, technology industry, cultural and
creative entrepreneurship, management in cultural institutions and
so much more. However, looking at other industries, creativity has be-
come more popular compared to the previous decades. This raises
questions if we are equipping the next generations to uphold these
standards. Are we providing children with exposure and develop-
ment opportunities to attain creative skills for their future careers?

An important point to make in this context, is that the CCI are both
skill intensive which require specific skills and high-level qualifications
of their workforce, and labor intensive, especially those with a high
concentration of creative outputs. This often generates more job sat-
isfaction then routine work that requires lower skills in a very mass pro-
duction like environment. Many of the careers available within the
CCI are highly skill driven. The outlook for developing a CCI should
be to not only diversify the Aruban economy, but to provide jobs for
our people. Jobs with high satisfaction rates and jobs that could offer
growth opportunities.

Continued on Page 15

Meet Our Columnist

ORANJESTAD — Thaïs G. Franken is a Master Student at the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands and
Graduate School of Governance | UNI-MERIT. Aruba Today met this remarkable young lady during an in-
terview for our newspaper. Her ambitions, her drive, her passion and her happy forthcoming made a big
impression and out of this came the mutual desire to work together. Aruba Today is more than happy to
announce Thaïs as our columnist. Her column Creative Islander will appear every two weeks on Thursday in
Aruba Today. Welcome to the club Thaïs.