Why programme design may be the most overlooked tool in building St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ cultural and creative industries. Today, conversations around the cultural and creative industries increasingly speak that language of ecosystems, innovation, enterprising, sustainability and that of sustainable development. The cultural and creative industries are a policy framework; a policy construct whose very genesis began in policy. Our cultural and creative future will not be solely determined by the policies we write, the spaces we design to imagine them would. By Jaykel J. Marsa Vincentian cultural practitioner, theatre-maker, and emerging public intellectual writing on culture, governance, and the creative economy.