STAMPED: Digital Talent Showcase Connecting Jamaican Artists with Global Opportunities

The Client

Bennett Law Center is an immigration law firm that partners with One Love Festival to create pathways for Jamaican artists to access US work permits and international performance opportunities. The firm recognized that talented performers across Jamaica’s 14 parishes lacked a centralized platform to showcase their abilities to an international audience—particularly the Jamaican diaspora who could serve as both fans and advocates.

The vision was ambitious: create a competition platform that would serve triple duty as a talent discovery engine, a qualified lead generator for immigration legal services, and an international booking pipeline for festivals. Winners would receive US work permit support from Bennett Law Center and booking at One Love Festival, creating real economic opportunities for artists.

The Challenge

Jamaica’s music and performance scene is rich but fragmented. Talented artists across all 14 parishes had no digital platform to reach international audiences, particularly the Jamaican diaspora who are emotionally connected to their home parishes but geographically separated. Traditional talent discovery relied on word-of-mouth and local events, severely limiting artists’ exposure.

Bennett Law Center needed a way to generate qualified leads for US work permit applications—but cold outreach to artists was inefficient and impersonal. They needed potential clients who were already demonstrating career ambition and international aspirations. One Love Festival needed a democratic, scalable way to identify authentic talent beyond Kingston’s established music scene.

Any voting-based competition faces an immediate credibility challenge: fraud. Without robust protections, competitions devolve into bot wars where the winner is whoever can manipulate votes most effectively. This destroys trust among legitimate participants and voters, undermining the entire platform’s purpose. The system needed to be both accessible (diaspora voters worldwide) and secure (resistant to manipulation).

Our Solution

STAMPED connects Jamaican performers with diaspora voters, legal services, and international opportunities. Artists submit performance videos for admin review, then compete via real-time voting with fraud prevention (session rate limiting, reCAPTCHA, deduplication). Winners receive US work permit support from Bennett Law Center and One Love Festival booking—generating qualified legal leads at peak career aspiration moments.

The platform features a submit-and-review workflow where artists upload performance videos, write bios, and link social media profiles. Admin reviews and approves submissions before they go live for voting, ensuring quality control.

The fraud-resistant voting system implements three layers of protection: session tracking limits voters to once per day per performer, IP-based rate limiting prevents automated voting, and reCAPTCHA v3 verification stops bots. Vote counts update in real-time via Supabase Realtime subscriptions, creating excitement and engagement.

Voters can browse performers by parish, connecting diaspora members with talent from their home region. A real-time leaderboard shows top performers ranked by votes with filtering by parish or category (Artists vs Sound Systems), with rankings updating instantly as votes come in.

The entire platform was built with Supabase PostgreSQL for the backend, React 18 with TypeScript for the frontend, and deployed to Vercel with a custom STAMPED theme featuring gold and green accents reflecting Jamaican heritage.

The Impact

STAMPED creates a complete value chain: competition drives voting, voting generates engagement, engagement creates qualified leads for immigration legal services, and winners receive international booking opportunities. Bennett Law Center gains leads who are already demonstrating career ambition at peak aspiration moments—far more qualified than cold outreach.

All 14 Jamaican parishes are represented on the platform, democratizing talent discovery beyond Kingston’s established music scene. The three-layer fraud prevention system ensures voting integrity, building trust among both artists and voters. Real-time leaderboard updates create excitement and encourage repeat visits from diaspora voters worldwide.

The platform bridges the gap between Jamaican artists and international opportunities that were previously inaccessible. By combining entertainment, community engagement, and legal services into a single platform, STAMPED demonstrates how technology can create economic pathways for underserved creative communities.