Kulture Key Project To Transform Downtown Kingston Into Cultural District

The Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) is transforming downtown Kingston into a cultural district, dubbed a Kulture Key, which will highlight the country’s iconic musical heritage while creating a space for recreation.

Mayor of Kingston, Senator Councillor Delroy Williams, tells JIS News that the Kulture Key combines leisure and learning, through the mounting of murals along various sections of downtown that tell stories of the country’s musical past.

Space will be provided to showcase Jamaican food, craft, artwork, music and dance, attracting locals and visitors and providing income-earning opportunity.

Information from the KSAMC website indicates that the project area, which has been designed to have the shape of a key, will start at the intersection of Water Lane and Church Street, then go north along Church Street to the intersection with Tower Street.

It will then travel east along Tower Street to Duke Street, then south along Duke Street to the intersection with Water Lane, then west along Water Lane to the intersection with Peters Lane, and south along Peters Lane to the intersection with Harbour Street.

“It is a space that is recognising contributions to our history and our culture and, in particular, it places special emphasis on our music and history,” Mayor Williams notes.

“When it is completed, it will display our street art. It will celebrate in various ways our music and the different genres of music, and it will also have a little commerce added to it in terms of our art forms and our music and just general commerce in terms of food and other delicacies,” Senator Williams notes.

Already, murals of reggae icons Millie Small, Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Sister Nancy and Desmond Dekker have been painted along Mark Lane.

Joshua Solas of Solas Ink, who did the Desmond Dekker artwork, says he wanted to pay tribute to the entertainer, whose music he was introduced to during his college years.

Dekker, who died in 2006 at the age of 65 was a ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician.

“In college, I borrowed my uncle’s records, one of which was of Desmond Dekker. I liked his style and the music he was putting out that time. So I thought it (the mural) would be a great way to share about an artist and give him some recognition,” Mr. Solas says.

Other muralists include Roshane “Paige” Taylor, Anna-Lisa Guthrie, Simone Racquel Williams and Monique Kidd.

The project also includes the renovation of roadways, sidewalk improvement and drainage works in some areas. Infrastructural works have already started along Water Lane.

“If you look at a section of Temple Lane, we have already put in the bricks and same will be done for Mark Lane because that adds value and the aesthetics is good,” Mayor Williams tells JIS News.

“In terms of the road infrastructure, this will include the sidewalks and so forth, that also feeds into the network of drains to move water,” he adds.

The Mayor further tells JIS News that the Municipal Corporation is also looking at pedestrianising some areas.

“That is something that we are giving serious thought to and we believe can happen if properly planned. It’s not the entire Kulture Key but certainly some sections of it,” he notes.

Mayor Williams says that the improvements will not be restricted to the designated area.

“From day one we have never confined it to any particular area. The Kulture Key is just one such area in the city that we have engaged our creative persons to come and to display their art work there, and at the same time facilitating and allowing our residents to interact with the culture and the history in the form of the murals,” he points out.

The Mayor tells JIS News that more activities are set to take place under the project over the next several months.

“For us, it’s never complete, it’s always trying to find new ideas and being creative about it and entertaining new ideas, always renewing and upgrading our space…that’s the kind of thinking we bring to all the spaces we have created,” he  says.

Meanwhile, other areas of the city will benefit under a broader programme, announced by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, earlier this year, to engage young artists to paint murals in 21 communities of high historical and cultural value in Kingston.

This programme will be implemented by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, through the municipality.

Mayor Williams explains that part of that programme “will be basically engaging our creatives to do street art, and those will be spread right across the municipality. So there will be street art at a section of the city that we call Flag Circle and other areas”.