The National Cultural Commission in its walk to safe guard and promote PNG’s cultural diversity launched the Creative Hub, a database for all visual artists around the country to help market their products and their skills.
This wonderful project is the brainchild of UPNG Creative Arts Strand Leader, Philemon Yalamu and his two teenage boys. The creative hub is just like a website but one that holds certain information.
“The four goals that this object focuses on are promote, market, showcase and empower. Those four concepts are the grounding principals based on the data that we collect. Going forward the data we collect, point to several factors and most of it are specifically to do with artists not able to have a dedicated place where they could display their work, said Yalamu.
Yalamu says that creative arts is not only one of the world’s fastest expanding industries but also one of the most transformative in terms of income generation. Provides innovative solutions to the economy, job creations, creativity in fact, keeps businesses competitive. If you do not have creative people, businesses will not be competitive.
NCC Executive Director, Steven Kilanda, said they are ready to support the artists or any creative person willing to develop their product status on a global scale through this great initiative, the Creative Hub.
He said, “We are also marketing our artists at the international level it is one of the biggest achievements. I think this is the first time that we as a government launched this app so that it will help our artists around the country to market their products and also market their skills at the international level, and we will partner with UPNG to see this project go through.”
Minister for Tourism Arts and Culture, Isi Henry Leonard, said the night’s event may have been small in terms of the number of people and the event in terms of the culture and art, but is a great leap for the efforts provided in promoting our culture.
Minister Leonard expressed, “Tonight is all about the usage and application of modern technology in terms of ICT and in today’s world ICT plays a very significant role in terms of information transfer, education, product promotion and even business. This is a great leap in terms of NCC’s effort.
“In the launch of the Creative Hub, it promotes our local artists, as they were never given any recognition. Tonight I am grateful that they have a platform.”
Minister Leonard at the event made a commitment of K20, 000 towards the Creative Hub program. He said that though the funding may be small it is the first step to helping them grow into achieving more in the future.