It’s Carnival time, a time of great importance to Dr Jo-anne Tull. Like many Caribbean people, she engages in one of the region’s most powerful expressions of culture. However, her connection to the national festival of Trinidad and Tobago and its cousins in the diaspora is much deeper. For decades, she has been a distinguished academic and consultant specialising in the creative and cultural industries.
Now she has embarked on a new professional journey, one that combines her sector-wide focus on the economic and developmental aspects of art and entertainment with the education and training of the artists, performers, festival managers, and creative entrepreneurs themselves. Dr Tull is the new Head of UWI St Augustine’s Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA).
“I want us to respond with agility to the needs of the Caribbean,” Dr Tull says of her vision for DCFA. She is committed to strengthening DCFA’s outreach, research relevance, and regional engagement. Her goal is to make the department a leader in cultural research and professional training, aligned with the evolving demands of the performing arts and creative sector.
It is a role that the DCFA is well-positioned to take. Established as the Creative Arts Centre in 1986 and becoming a full department in 2006, the DCFA provides an unparalleled combination of academic training and practice-based/ performance pedagogy in several creative fields.
Students can attain degrees and certificates in Carnival Studies, Dance, Music, Theatre Arts, and Visual Arts. They also offer programmes and courses related to entrepreneurship and management in the creative and culture industries. In addition, as a department within an institution of higher education, DCFA faculty and students pursue research, support policy development, and provide outreach on a national and community level.
Collectively, the department is a valuable resource for the development of the arts in the Caribbean, particularly for some with Dr Tull’s outlook.
Her career shows a commitment to building frameworks that support the creative sector at both institutional and regional levels. For her, culture is a critical site of economic activity, identity formation, and national development. She has spent more than two decades working within DCFA, contributing to the department’s evolution and to the wider recognition of the cultural and creative industries as a serious field of academic and professional inquiry.
A proud alum of The UWI Cave Hill, Dr Tull studied Public Sector Management, where she developed a foundation in governance, systems thinking, and public accountability. She credits the influence of Professor Duncan and Professor Khan as formative in shaping her analytical approach. Her postgraduate studies in International Relations expanded her regional and global perspective, equipping her to engage with the intersections of culture, diplomacy, and development policy.
Her early professional focus on the business of copyright as doctoral research and simultaneously serving as research assistant to Dr Keith Nurse on the first ever region-wide study on music as an industry came at a pivotal moment in the Caribbean. As she reflects, “the creative industry was just solidifying itself in the region. People had begun to see and understand the worth and depth of our creatives.”
This period informed her long-standing advocacy for the formal recognition of creative labour. It also positioned her among the early contributors to a field that was still defining its boundaries.
Throughout her tenure at DCFA, Dr Tull has occupied several key leadership roles. She has served and continues to serve as Project Lead of The Old Yard (see article in this issue), Coordinator of the Carnival Studies Unit, Coordinator of the Postgraduate Diploma in Arts and Cultural Enterprise Management, as well as Lecturer across these programmes, among many other responsibilities. Each role reflects her emphasis on linking academic research with industry practice and community engagement, ensuring that the department remains relevant to the realities of Caribbean cultural production.
Teaching remains central to her professional identity. She values the collaborative energy of academic environments and the intellectual exchange that shapes curriculum development.
“When I see our staff working together, with all hands on deck when we are in a crunch I’m happy to be a part of and fostering an environment where we support each other,” she says.
She is candid about the realities of leadership within complex institutions. Aligning priorities, managing change, and sustaining momentum require adaptability and clarity. As she observes, “getting everyone on the same page along with adaptability and change management can be a little challenging but it is not daunting.” Her approach recognises leadership as an ongoing negotiation between vision and practical execution.
Beyond her professional responsibilities, Dr Tull maintains a commitment to life balance. A proud mother of two, including a DCFA Visual Arts graduate, she values the distinction between personal and professional life. Her guiding philosophy is succinct: “Inner positivity reflects outwardly, life is about balance.” She sustains that balance through travel, time with loved ones, engagement with cultural spaces such as museums, galleries and festivals, and adequate rest.
As a pioneer in the academic study and administration of the cultural and creative industries, she has helped shape the intellectual and structural foundations of the field. Under her leadership, DCFA strives to continue as a critical site where research and practice converge, ensuring that Caribbean culture is not only celebrated, but rigorously studied, protected, and advanced.
