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NCCA holds confab on cultural statistics, creative economy

By John Rey Saavedra

October 14, 2019, 9:54 pm

CEBU CITY – Inscribing a new trend in boosting national development through culture and arts, officials of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) were in Cebu on Monday to spearhead a two-day international conference on cultural statistics and creative economy.

Al Ryan Alejandre, executive director of NCCA, said the event was conceptualized “to give opportunity to our local researchers to showcase their researches and to contribute to our policy-making and planning”.

The event, Alejandre said, also gives focus on the local government units’ (LGU) contribution to national development through culture and arts.

Marichu Tellano, deputy executive director of NCCA, said the government is studying methods on quantifying achievements and accomplishments, as well as impacts of the initiatives to promote culture.

“Our effort is to be able to push forward, with local culture enabling sustainable development,” Tellano said during the press briefing on the sidelines of the opening of the 2019 International Conference on Cultural Statistics and Creative Economy here. She also bared the new trend of blending narratives with charts and graphs of data collected.

Tellano was pleased over the chance to share the country’s expert knowledge on cultural statistics to other countries.

“We pursued our endeavor and we thought that we should be international because we have our own cultural experience that can enrich other experiences,” she said, adding that “there are countries ahead of us in cultural statistics that may share their own experiences".

Dr. Shahbaz Khan, United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) representative to many countries, including the Philippines, highlighted the importance of the two-day conference “in a UNESCO point of view”.

“This is a very important conference because culture is not just putting into museums or putting special kind of just hanging on the walls. Culture helps guide the society to move to better socioeconomic and environment outcome,” Khan said during the briefing.

“Philippines is very special. It has a unique culture, a culture over history that we know it today. It guides our future,” he said.

Khan said one of the prime challenges that culture can address is poverty.

“How can we have no poverty unless we have creative economies which is built on the culture of understanding? How can cities be sustainable if we don’t take care of local and indigenous knowledge? How can we have better education for everyone unless we pay respect to local indigenous local conditions, special features we have?” he said.

According to the program, the conference will have seven sessions that will tackle cultural education, cultural awareness, cultural economy and intangible cultural heritage, books and press, culture for development indicators, among others, with numerous presenters from the academes.

A session on creative social entrepreneurs, cultural hubs, and applying as UNESCO creative city will also be given and the last topic will feature the NCCA’s study on Filipino values. (PNA)

 

 

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