Mention the Jordan Valley in a conversation about Creative and Cultural Industries, their future and their promise, you are more likely to hear words of discouragement than possibility or potential. The region is still widely viewed as a peripheral, a place of unbearable heat, hardship, and underdevelopment. But, what if this very region (long marginalised and underestimated) holds the keys to reimagining Jordan’s Creative and Cultural future? What if the rhythms of its agricultural seasons, the depth of its living heritage, and the quiet resilience of its communities are not barriers but the foundation of a truly transformative ecosystem?
To build a truly transformative Creative and Cultural economy, Jordan must redefine its Creative and Cultural Industries through the lens of the Jordan Valley, a region rich in heritage, rooted in agricultural traditions, and shaped by the authenticity of the seasonal rhythms. Such authentic richness far exceeds the reach of infrastructure. Yet, the Jordan Valley continues to be viewed through a narrow lens of marginalisation and “cheap labour”. It is time to reimagine the Jordan Valley, not as a peripheral space, but as Jordan’s generative core of the future of Creative and Cultural Industries.
The Jordan Valley marginalisation is not accidental; it is systemic. For decades, the Jordan Valley has been viewed through a distorted lens; as a land of cheap crops and cheaper labour. It is widely known, though rarely documented, that many women work as early as 04:00 a.m. until sunset for as little as five Jordanian Dinars per day. At the same time, men – structurally unemployed- often remain at home. Poverty is real, but it is not the result of cultural failure. It is the product of an economic model that views the region as extractive rather than generative. The same model allows crops like tomatoes to rot unharvested because their market price no longer justifies the labour. Add to that the lack of social services, the absence of safe creative-cultural spaces, and rising issues like drug use and sexual exploitation, and the Jordan Valley becomes not just poor, but profoundly disinvested. This is the reality we must start from if we are to speak honestly about creative transformation.
On the shelf of Dar Alkaram, an authentic community-based organisation in Sweimeh, sits a worn copy of Food First: The Myth of Scarcity, first published in 1980. The book argues, with urgent clarity, that famine is not the result of nature’s limits but of political and economic decisions. Reading it today – in a place where tomatoes are often left unharvested because they are too cheap to justify picking – feels both ironic and devastatingly current. But the Jordan Valley is not simply a space of scarcity. It is a space of abundance misrecognised. Its agricultural rhythms, food practices, and oral histories hold deep Creative Cultural Value. The seasonal nature of life here (dictated not by digital clocks but by harvests and tradition) offers a different tempo for creative cultural production. In this sense, the Jordan Valley is rich in precisely what creative cultural modern economies claim to seek: rootedness, identity, and authenticity. The problem is not absence; it is invisibility and recognition. What if these rhythms were recognised as creative cultural infrastructures? What if the creativity already embedded in agricultural life were supported, connected, and scaled? This is not romanticising hardship or poverty-nostalgia; it is a strategy.
The Jordan Valley has long existed off the national radar; known only for its heat, its insects, its cheap crops, or the resorts of the Dead Sea. Beyond the hotel lobbies, many believe there is nothing to see, and certainly nothing to build on. But the perception is shaped by infrastructure absence, not by creative cultural or ecological emptiness. Worse still, decades of extractive agricultural policy (driven by pesticides-heavy monoculture and imported seeds) have turned once rich soil into infertile ground, poisoning not just the land but the imagination of what this region could be. Yet, there are alternatives already taking root from efforts to revive indigenous seeds, like those led by Laith Dwaikat, to a small permaculture movement challenging the myth of productivity. The Jordan Valley is not infertile; it is misunderstood. To build a truly transformative Creative and Cultural economy, Jordan must move beyond concrete and air-conditioning and learn again how to read the land. Reimagining the Jordan Valley is not a romantic project. It is ecological, economic, and cultural recovery. It is a strategy. It is resistance. It is resilience.
