Artist urges NCAC to be in vanguard of providing information about arts
Tue, May 28, 2019 | By publisher
Media
AN artist, Alex Peter, on Tuesday urged the Nigerian Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) to be in the vanguard of providing information and data about artists and the sector.
Peter, the Chief Executive Officer of the Abuja – based EXTINEALEXPEN, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that such move would help decision-makers to know what the sector is all about.
“Arts and culture are inextricably linked, but the art sector is a platform that further expresses culture.
“Arts should be the central focus of the NCAC and also for research programmes and collation of data about the sector for the country, ’’he said.
He said that the council should be encouraged to champion national dialogue about the development of arts and culture.
“The body should be independent so that it can also inform the wider community about key issues in the sector and the different kinds of value it can generate.”
He said when NCAC continued to live up to its statutory responsibilities, the sector would not be mainly in the hands of individuals.
It would also be contributing its quota to the country’s GDP, he said.
“We do not have proper data of all the tourist sites in Nigeria and how functional they are; hence, many people run abroad for vacation,’’he said.
The artist said that states should not be complaining of lack of funds considering the tourism potential God had endowed them with.
“States should develop their various sites to attract tourists and make themselves tourism potential.”
He added that the council needed to build on data collections and research undertaken by sector leaders.
“The data collection will help to understand where we are and the direction in which we are heading.
“By their nature, data cannot represent a comprehensive picture of the current situation; rather, they are clues, symptoms, or pointers to things that are changing.
“Literature, music, theatre, dance, performing arts, comedy, arts festivals, visual arts and craft, arts education and training and cultural development, fashion and others will benefit more from data availability,’’ he said.
Peter said that the NCAC should partner with other cultural institutions such as libraries, museums and archives for these things to work well.
He said also that they needed to train data artistes who would be plotting graphs, creating charts, inforgraphics and other visual tools that would the public to understand complex data.
“They must have strong communication skills and be familiar with a variety of visualization software programmes and web-based graphics,’’ he said.
NAN reports that Peter graduated in Accountancy from the Kogi State University.
-NAN
BE
– 28 May, 2019 @ 18:10 GMT |
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