Tourism Ministry introduces monthly workshops

In its bid to emphasise the role of the creative arts sector in national development, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture has instituted a monthly workshop to share knowledge and contribute ideas about the industry.

The workshops are part of the ministry’s strategy to rope in creative artists as partners in development, thus creating an enabling environment for using music, drama, movies, art and craft to influence and educate the masses while promoting issues of national interest such as sanitation and unemployment.

Another very important outcome of these workshops will be a strategic plan to monetise creativity and make artists financially independent.

A statement signed by the sector Minister, Madam Catherine Afeku, said the workshops would be in the form of master classes at which experts would share knowledge and lead discussions to create the necessary strategies and plan of action for the industry.

The first of the workshops will come off at the Accra Tourism Information Centre (ATIC) on Tuesday, February 5.

The statement said the initiative was in support of President Akufo Addo’s commitment to use the creative arts as a tool to drive national development.

“It is the wish of the ministry that arts and culture practitioners will participate in this programme whose ultimate goal is to demonstrate, for all to see, the power of arts and culture as a sine-qua-non in national development.

“Your advocacy and constructive criticisms have been taken on board. We can only pray that these workshops will get even better and more useful as all of us as stakeholders roll them out.

“Let us all, as government, artists, the media and civil society, come together to prove the truth in what the late playwright, Professor Joe de Graft, advocated in his play, Sons and daughters, that ‘the arts also can pay,’” the statement noted.