Unearthing and Analyzing Data on Festivals in the Caribbean

In the Caribbean, one of the most visible effects of the rise of creative and cultural industries is the proliferation of festivals, some of which began in the pre- and immediate post-independence era. The number of such festivals has increased tenfold, and the multiplicity of genres represented has also increased. Despite this proliferation, and despite the festivals' possible economic, social and cultural importance, there is a singular lack of empirical data about them. Responding to this information gap is the main motivation for this paper, which contributes to the enrichment of the literature on creative and cultural industries in the Caribbean, principally through the issue of the statistical observation of festivals. There is also some preliminary analysis of the data in the form of descriptive statistics, then a preliminary univariate analysis, then, finally, a more complicated multivariate analysis based on simple and multiple factorial analysis of correspondence. The results provide some evidence that festivals have the potential to influence the performance of the tourism sector and, by extension, the performance of the wider economy, in the Caribbean.