Ghana Culture Day: Culture Forum calls for change in policy towards culture

Prof Esi Sutherland-Addy, Chairperson of the Ghana Culture Forum

Thursday, March 14 is Ghana Culture Day and as Ghanaians mark the day, the Ghana Culture Forum is calling for a tangible change in the policy environment and attitudes towards culture in the country.

The Forum, a membership-based civil society consultative and advocacy network of cultural practitioners, activists and organizations, in a statement released Wednesday and copied Myjoyonline.com saluted “all cultural practitioners, workers and intellectuals on the occasion of Ghana Culture Day.”

The Ghana Culture Day was instituted in 2012 at the official launch of the Ghana Culture Forum with the sole aim of fostering a common vision of affirming the cultural foundations of development and building up the cultural sector.

According to the statement, jointly signed by Prof Esi Sutherland-Addy, Chairperson and Akunu Dake, Vice Chairperson, the Ghana Culture Forum has noted with concern that Ghana is yet to fully recognise the enormous force which will be released once the symbiotic relationship between culture and development is turned into programmes and projects.

“As things stand, culture and creative industries are on the periphery of national development programmes,” it stressed.

Ghana failing to fully recorgnise the value of culture, the statement noted, has created a state of paralysis resulting in demoralisation of the practitioners in the culture and creative arts sector.

“One major challenge therefore, as we mark Ghana Culture Day, is that there need to be a tangible change in the policy environment and attitudes towards culture both in the public and private sector to enable its mainstreaming into and act as the impetus for Ghana's social and economic transformation,” the Forum advised.

The statement stated that, “Despite the threat of despondency, there is a new wave of expectancy among cultural practitioners and advocates. The membership of the forum is dedicated to partner communities, the state, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in a programme of rejuvenation and transformation of the Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts sector.”

Ghana Culture Forum called for the envisioning and development of new policies, strategies and actions that will inspire cultural practitioners to be more relevant, increasingly creative and inventive and profoundly excellent in their various endeavours.

The Forum hoped that the Ghana Culture Day will annually inspire the nation to assert its dignity and place in the world of the future.

“Together, we dedicate ourselves to ensuring that culture is no longer seen and treated as a barrier to development but rather as a foundation and anchor for the nation's development agenda. This is the vision of culture as enshrined in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the 1992 Constitution,” the statement said.

The Ghana Culture Forum said it had spent the last year working with governmental agencies and the media to bring culture into the mainstream of the planning process.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Ernest Dela Aglanu (Twitter: @delaXdela / Instagram: citizendela)