Creative arts sector gets major boost with passage of bill

0
Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng Gyasi

… new agency, fund expected to drive industry’s growth

Parliament has passed the Creative Arts Industry bill 2020 into law, to accelerate growth of the sector. The law will serve as a framework to regulate the country’s creative economy, including music, film, advertising, public relations, architecture, fashion and tourism, among other related sectors.

The law, among other things, provides for establishment of a Creative Arts Agency to promote the industry and also build capacity for practitioners in the country, and a fund to address the financing challenges which creative arts practitioners and operators encounter in executing projects.

Addressing the press in Parliament following passage of the bill into law, Minister for Tourism Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng Gyasi, expressed that funding has over the years constituted a major challenge in the creative arts industry – adding that with this new law, it will allow practitioners to access loans and grants to execute project efficiently.

“This agency will be responsible for managing the creative arts sector, and proposing policies and activities that will positively impact the industry. It also proposes establishment of a Creative Arts Fund, which is very significant because we know that is one of the major challenges to the creative arts industry – accessing funding.

“We are excited, because we know that from next year the agency is going to be set up and we will have adequate funding from the budget, from other sources. Also, there is going to be a levy from the creative arts practitioners which will also go into this fund to support activities of the agency,” the sector-minister further stated.

Mrs. Oteng Gyasi assured that the president will assent his signature to the law before the year ends to make it operational in 2021. “We are expecting that the president will assent to the bill before end of this year to make it law; and from 2021 we will begin to implement all the provisions of the law,” she said.

With this new law, there is also a requirement for all creative arts enterprises to be registered with the agency to provide it with the required database of the industry’s various domains to help in formulating necessary policies by the Creative Arts Ministry.

Leave a Reply