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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