Florida Black Chamber and Pan African Cultural Heritage Tourism

CULTURAL ECONOMICS

“Promoting Cultural Commerce throughout the  Global Marketplace”
The Florida Black Chamber is the architect for the development of the National Black Tourism Marketing Corporation.  The Florida Black Chamber was organized in 2004 as a ‘State Chamber’, with the mission of supporting the economic development platform of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Incorporated, Washington, D.C.; and to act as a resource for minority chambers and economic development organizations in the State of Florida and across the Globe  due to the state's large and diverse Pan African population. 

The Florida Black Chamber’s primary focus is to be an advocate for Pan African American businesses and communities.  All effort is placed on accurately marketing, advertising, and promoting the culture and heritage of Pan African Americans and seeking opportunities for minority owned businesses and chamber members, by involving the community, as a whole, in our efforts. No resource or relationship is discarded in the Florida Black Chamber’s effort to create jobs and business opportunities. A Pan African and global cultural marketing strategy enhances the success opportunities for all chamber members.  We are the Pan African Cultural Heritage Market Place. 
 
Proven Research: The Florida Black Chamber organized around the proven research of how customers search for products and services and how they enter into the global marketplace.  As a result of those findings, a collaborative effort was established that led to the creation of portals and relationships to address disparities issues that inhibited economic growth and business development.  These disparities show up as indicators of poverty and are also used to measure prosperity.  Few organizations have the mandate to measure both.

Problem Solver:  The Florida Black Chamber reorganized, formed partnerships, and created entities that will effectively address poverty, disparities, and assist in creating wealth by educating our members and the communities we serve about proven economic development methods, procedures, and processes.  We designed our departments within the chamber to be resources, based on the cultural traditions and habits of our society.  Our focus on addressing the needs of our members and partners, from the economic principle of “Cultural Commerce”, led to the Chamber organizational structure and creating an alliance that will continue to foster “Cultural Commerce, Influence and Knowledge”: 

Partnering:  The Florida Black Chamber of Commerce seeks partnerships with state, corporate, non-profit, and businesses that sincerely want to partner.  Only with our state’s combined resources and knowledge, can the causes of disparity and poverty be eradicated and the middle class expanded in all communities.  We believe by focusing on our cultural heritage and the assets within our own communities, we as a people can move forward and develop a new leadership base that will guarantee our future prosperity.   Together with the assets of the National Black Chamber and other mainstream partners, the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce is confident that improvements can be made in the economic and social welfare of all of Florida’s citizens.  We encourage you to become a partner by joining us as a member! 

                                                                     All Cultures are welcome!! 

The Florida Black Chamber’s Economic Principle: Cultural economics is the application of economic analysis to the creative and performing arts, the heritage and cultural industries, in both the public and private sectors. It is concerned with the economic organization of the cultural sector and with the behavior of producers, consumers, and governments in that sector. The subject includes a range of approaches, mainstream and radical, neoclassical, welfare economics, public policy and institutional economics and it also espouses interdisciplinary analysis connected to these topics.  Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes.

Culture: Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture matters as to economic outcomes and its relationship to mainstream society and institutions.  The cultural clusters can include the arts, history, traditions, civil rights, and religion; using the culture of micro-enterprise businesses.

Heritage: Here, ‘heritage’ refers to something inherited from the past. The word has several different senses, including:  National Heritage, an inheritance of geography, landscape and landforms; and Kinship, the relationship between entities that share a genealogical origin.

Cultural Heritage:  Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society: man-made heritage.  The best examples are art, food, music, monuments, ethnic communities, and districts.

Cultural Arts:  Cultural arts refer to transformation and a collaboration of different art forms. The term embodies creative thinking and critique, which encompasses the analyses of contemporary visual culture alongside other art forms i.e. visual art, literature, music, theatre, film, dance, etc. Cultural arts help to explain the world in which we live, worldview and often challenge current ideas, thoughts and practice. In general, cultural arts are multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-genre. Cultural arts are less about definition and more about meaning and making sense of our current environment through an exploration of creativity.

Cultural Heritage Tourism or Diaspora Tourism: A branch of tourism oriented towards the cultural heritage of the location where tourism is occurring. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States defines heritage tourism as, "travelling to experience the places and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and to experience that authentically represent the cultural experience and traditions of the past and present."

Pan Africanism:  An ideology and movement that encourages the solidarity of Africans worldwide. It is based on the belief that unity is vital to economic, social, and political progress and aims to “unify and uplift” people of African descent. The ideology asserts that the fate of all African peoples and countries are intertwined. At its core Pan-Africanism is “a belief that African peoples, both on the continent and in the Diaspora, share not merely a common history, but a common destiny”. The largest Pan-African organization is the African Union.
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