Creative industries: The Philippines' greatest hidden strength
What do the animated series Trese, actress Dolly de Leon, Michelin-star Filipino restaurant Kasama, James Beard award-winning content creator Erwan Heussaff, Buensalido Architects, and P-pop band SB19 have in common?
They are all superstars of our creative economy who’ve won accolades abroad and are putting the Philippines and Filipino culture and creativity on the map.
That being said, what exactly is a creative economy? Is it arts, creative entrepreneurship, content, design, tech, or everything in between?
It’s actually an economy of ideas that goes by many names: orange economy, cultural industries, content industries, knowledge industries, cultural and creative industries, and many others.
In the Philippines, as reflected in RA 11904 or the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act (PCIDA), the creative industries are “trades involving persons, whether natural or juridical, that produce cultural, artistic, and innovative goods and services originating in human creativity, skill and talent and having the potential to create wealth and livelihood through the generation and utilization of intellectual property.”
Okay, it’s kind of a mouthful. Simply put, the creative industries are a fast-growing economic sector that puts the spotlight on our greatest asset and value add: our creativity and our people.
We’ve always known Filipinos to be insanely creative. Walk through any karaoke joint, tune into a reality show, log on to TikTok, or simply turn on the news and you’re bound to hear of a Filipino creative making waves. Unbeknownst to many of us, they have also been able to propel our country forward through its post-pandemic recovery.
Exhibit A: A Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) study published earlier this year shows that in 2023, our creative industries generated a staggering 1.72 trillion pesos for our economy—7.1% of our total GDP. This is across nine creative domains as identified in RA 11904, including publishing and print media, which generated 11% of its total value or 188.56 billion pesos.
Exhibit B: There are more than 7 million Filipinos working in the sector—a critical mass of them considered freelance. That’s around 14% of our total labor force in the same year.
Exhibit C: We are a leader in ASEAN in terms of exporting our creative output, primarily in the created services sector, as revealed by a recent UNCTAD study.
Outside those numbers, creative industries are the heart and soul of our country. Creativity gives us our identity. It’s in the books we read, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the musicals we watch, the songs we listen to, and the content we consume. Ironically declared as non-essential during the height of the pandemic, it was creative content that got us through those trying times.
Thankfully, the law’s passage and the government’s recent commitment to develop our creative economy have averted any sort of existential “strike” on the part of creatives. A world without creativity? It might be worse than a zombie apocalypse.
With the law in full effect and considerable resources being allocated to developing the sector, now the onus is on our Filipino creatives to create boldly. And this requires a radical paradigm shift! Perhaps our nature as Filipinos having been colonized four times over is dictated by colonial mentality. Past creativity has always been tethered to Western modalities. In the age of globalism and hyperconnectivity where diversity is de rigueur, present and future creativity can and should spark in one’s own backyard. The hyper-localism of creative output is finding resonances here and abroad so much so that hyperlocal has become the new global. This means Filipino creatives ought to create indio-geniusly, as National Artist Kidlat Tahimik puts it, but with a global trajectory in mind.
Interestingly enough, we go back to where we started. From Trese’s celebration of Filipino folklore in the manananggal and the tikbalang to Erwan’s digital embrace of Filipino culinary heritage and traditions in all his travels, they are creatives who have discovered the secret sauce to future-centric creativity—our heritage and our past.
Culture and heritage, if transposed sensitively to creative content, can bring us our own hallyu. What’s more, the creative industries, if supported and championed staunchly by the whole of government and the whole of society, can impact not only our economy but also other governance outcomes as well. Think soft power, cultural diplomacy, health and mental wellness, education, social inclusion and mobility, and even urban development.
A world without creativity? It might be worse than a zombie apocalypse.
In the age of tech, the analog will and spirit need to be alive. We need to upskill our creative firms, entrepreneurs, and creators to learn the technology of today; syndicate Filipino creativity and intellectual property to find multiplatform and multiformat expressions towards a greater I.P. ecology (i.e. more Marvel Cinematic Universes); and strengthen whole-of-nation synergy towards nation-building and developing our still-latent Philippine Creative Industries.
The goal really is for the Philippines to be the number one creative economy in the ASEAN region by the year 2030. It’s lofty and ambitious, but doable if we all collectively lean into our own selves. After all, a creative future is not something we just stumble upon or leave to chance. It requires planning, dreaming, executing, and more importantly, championing.
We have to be our own biggest advocates and supporters. The first one in line for the newest Filipino play, movie, book, restaurant, trade fair, song, etc. Imagine all 110 million of us storming algorithms to propel Filipino creativity forward onto the global stage. Now that’s power.