Kingston Creative blends art and sound in New Water Lane project

Next month, Kingston Creative will launch ‘The Soundtrack of downtown Kingston’ and has issued an open call to Jamaican musicians, producers, and artistes to help design the musical identity of Water Lane in the Art District.

“Artistes can collaborate to create an evolving soundscape that reflects the past, present, and future of Kingston’s music culture, from reggae’s roots to the contemporary sounds shaping Jamaica today. Musicians will come together to select the winner, who will receive a cash prize,” said Andrea Dempster Chung, founder and executive director of Kingston Creative.

“This project will turn Water Lane into something unique in the Caribbean: a street where visual art and music work together to tell the story of the city. The soundtrack of Kingston has always existed. Now, we want to bring it into the open, into the public realm, where both residents and visitors can experience it.”

Kingston Creative is a non-profit arts organisation founded in 2017 by a team of three co-founders who believe in using art and culture to drive social and economic transformation. In addition to its monthly Artwalk and marketplace on Water Lane, the organisation has beautified several sections of downtown Kingston with murals and refurbished streets. It also offers a series of cultural tours of the city.

Its best-selling tour is ‘Sounds of the City’, in which tourists spend half a day visiting the Water Lane murals, Beat Street, Trench Town’s Culture Yard, and other iconic music locations. The augmented-reality feature on the murals plays music by artistes such as Kabaka Pyramid, while record shop Rockers International on Beat Street plays vintage vinyl.

“Yet, in many ways, seekers exploring downtown Kingston find it hard to experience the music. They encounter our music mostly through history, through museum exhibits like Peter Tosh and Bunny Lee, stories, and the legacy of icons like Bob Marley. The next stage of Kingston’s cultural tourism strategy is to bring music back into the streets where it was born,” Dempster Chung added.

“Imagine walking through Water Lane and hearing a carefully curated soundscape that blends reggae classics, dub, ska, dancehall, and emerging artists. Imagine murals accompanied by music created by Jamaican producers. Imagine visitors discovering new Jamaican music simply by walking through the district.”

Recently, an international jury representing the Creative Tourism Awards, in partnership with the UNESCO-EU Transcultura programme, recognised Kingston Creative for the Best Strategy for a Caribbean Urban Destination. This marks the organisation’s third major global tourism honour. The World’s Best Creative Destination award was received by Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett at the ITB Convention in Berlin in 2023, and in 2024 Kingston won Expedia’s Sustainability in Tourism award.

“These awards are a nod to the strides being made by the non-profit arts organisation that for almost a decade has been consistently advocating for opportunities for artists and the transformation of downtown Kingston. Kingston Creative has been building partnerships and executing projects that are redefining the tourism offering. This strategy works, it is replicable, and it is a blueprint that every town and city in Jamaica and across the Caribbean needs,” Dempster Chung noted.

“Winning Best Strategy for a Caribbean Urban Destination confirms that Kingston Creative’s Art District is becoming a model for creative tourism, but there is one dimension of the experience that we are only just beginning to unlock, the music … Music can transform that visit to downtown Kingston into a fully sensory experience, one that reflects our identity as a global music capital and generates new economic opportunities for musicians.”