Times Of Swaziland: CHANGE IN TRENDS CALLS FOR  POLICY REVIEW – STANLEY

CHANGE IN TRENDS CALLS FOR  POLICY REVIEW – STANLEY
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Mxolisi Dlamini on 13/06/2023 08:42:00


MBABANE – Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture (ENCAC) CEO Stanley
Dlamini says the sudden change in trends in the industry called for a review of
the arts and culture policy.
The arts and culture policy was reviewed on Friday at The George Hotel during a
conference that was attended by artists, event organisers, promoters, and
dignitaries from the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs. In an
interview with this publication after the conference, Dlamini shared that the
sudden change in trends in the industry called for a review of the arts and
culture policy.“I think one of the issues is that everyone’s government
policy must be reviewed after five years. The other issue is that there are
emanating issues that require us to review the policy; the trends have changed,
whether in the art industry or generally, so our sector was not active 10 years
ago but now it is more active, which calls for the policy to be reviewed,”
Dlamini said.
When probed on what are some of the activities that the council is doing to
match the current trends, he shared that they were on a drive to launch centres
that would enable the maximum development of artists locally. “What we are
doing in the art and culture space is that we are moving to the regions. In the
next two to three weeks, we will be launching regional art centres, where we
want more artists to emerge in the regions. More music will be recorded from the
regions. More artists who would have otherwise had challenges in terms of
getting their music on CDs or any form of platform will now have access because,
getting to the regions, we will be dealing with issues of rehearsal spaces and
jamming spaces,” Dlamini said. During the presentation of the Arts and Culture
Policy, the Arts Council made a declaration that they would be encouraging local
broadcasters to broadcast 90 per cent locally produced content. When probed on
how the council will go about advocating for the national broadcasters, he
shared that they are currently working on a strategy that broadcasters will be
obliged to use.
“We are going to make sure that there is buy-in from national broadcasters
through a popularisation plan that we are yet to discuss as a council. We have
interministerial committees, where the ministry will invite certain ministries
that will have issues that cut across other ministries. Those meetings will be
to mobilise broadcasters, where the arts and culture policy will be pointing
these to your ministry and pointing that to your ministry, which will lead to
the launch level where we will invite the ministries to advocate for national
broadcasters on what the art council says,” Dlamini said.
He went on to share that more local material should be produced to empower
broadcasters to align with the resolutions of the policy. “It is a trend that
exists everywhere in the world. When you are a citizen of a particular country,
you must enjoy the benefits of being a citizen. In football, they will call it
home ground advantage.” In the arts, we say, “Let’s consume local and then
move across. If you go to the radio or TV, you must listen to the Swazi voice,
so we are building on that as well to say, let’s create more material because
chances are that the radio is playing international music and there is not
enough material, so let them correct their slogan if we have enough material to
play local music,” Dlamini said.