Pangasinan 4th district Rep. Christopher de Venecia (Photo courtesy of Christopher de Venecia's Facebook page)
MANILA – With the celebration of National Arts Month this February, the chair of the House Committee on Creative Industry and Performing Arts on Wednesday called for a "speedier" release of grants by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) to support the creativity of Filipino artists.
Pangasinan Representative Christopher de Venecia said that due to the late release of grants from the NCCA to artists for their participation in art fairs, they have resorted to advancing payments, relying on reimbursements and subjecting themselves to the tedious requirements needed in order to claim these.
He said the NCCA grants release and process need "to be speedier so that private partners can be empowered to put up more platforms for artists to showcase their work across the archipelago.”
To incentivize local government units to convene the Local Culture and Arts Councils (LCACs), De Venecia called upon the Department of the Interior and Local Government to recalibrate the criteria for awarding the Seal of Good Local Governance by increasing the weight ascribed to the development of arts and culture in the locality.
"This is in recognition of the actual economic benefits investing in arts, culture, and creativity can actually bring," he said.
He also asked the NCCA and the soon-to-be-convened Philippine Creative Industries Development Council to develop a database on all the galleries in the Philippines for the information of the general public, provide an avenue for collaboration and co-production among them and foster arts residency programs for appropriate funding “at the right time.”
He emphasized the need to forge more collaborations between the visual arts sector and the design sector — such as fashion, architecture, textile, interior design – to develop functional creations and foster an intellectual property ecology.
He noted that due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the country’s museums and galleries closed down, whether temporarily or permanently, and laid off employees due to a drastic decrease in revenues of these establishments.
"Our Visual artists had limited to no access to art materials that they otherwise need to sustain their trade. And even now as the economy reopened, they remain costly. The sector had also been facing major pain points,” he said.
The visual arts sector has suffered hurdles, such as the general lack of permanent galleries in the countryside, which leads to the lack of diversity of regional material and opportunities to cultivate patronage, as well as the concentration of opportunities, patrons and infrastructure in Metro Manila and Metro Cebu.
He also pointed out the general lack of government mechanisms to provide benefits for artists, which he traced to the fact that there was no proper registration system for artists for social services, "and if there was, it came with all the red tape or the lack of general awareness of these processes.”
He said there was also a lack of institutional support for art education in schools.
"There were issues such as the lack of resources or equipment to educate students, or the mode of teaching was English, which may not have been the best for our learners who might be able to grasp these concepts better in the vernacular, or even the general lack of prioritization of art education vis-a-vis STEM subjects," he said.
PH high school for creative arts system
Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte, meanwhile, called for the swift passage of a measure that aims to set up a system of specialized high schools across the country focused on honing the artistic skills and talents of young Filipinos.
Duterte said this proposal would help ensure the development of the talents of artistically gifted children who will, in the future, lead in promoting and preserving Philippine arts and culture.
The House Committee on Basic Education and Culture has already approved the substitute bill consolidating HB 5075 with other similar measures.
“The special programs for the arts in schools usually suffer from neglect and shrinking budgets. It’s about time that we recognize the importance of developing and sustaining a pool of artistically talented young Filipinos who will keep our culture and creative industries alive,” Duterte said.
“Given that culture and the arts are essential to the holistic development of society, it is imperative to work towards more inclusive opportunities for children to engage in the creative arts, for such measures will provide the foundation for their success in the future,” he added.
Duterte said the committee-approved measure will not establish new high schools but will instead set up a creative arts system by finetuning the curriculum of the arts and design special programs in existing schools supervised by the Department of Education (DepEd).
The substitute measure incorporates HB 5075’s provision on offering scholarships to deserving students with considerable potential in the fields of the performing arts, creative writing, visual arts and applied arts.
Under the substitute bill, the DepEd will craft a curriculum that will deal with functional literacy. The curriculum on arts and design will be drawn up by the NCCA, in coordination with other cultural agencies.
National artists and experts in the various fields of the creative arts who have taken the non-Licensure Examination for Teachers would be qualified to teach under the PHSCA system. (PNA)
