By: Yunus S Saliu
In support of culture and creative industry in The Gambia, the National Center for Arts and Culture with full support from UNESCO will kick start a three weeks training in support of culture and creative industry development for small creative business for women and youth.
The three weeks training will start mid-March 2019 follow by a four week internship at the end as it will run through the months of March to May 2019.
The training will bring a pragmatic and effective approach in capacity building to address the most pressing needs and deliver immediate gains to the creative sector.
Hassoum Ceesay, acting Director General of National Arts and Culture elaborated on the aim, objectives and importance of the training. Among the objectives, he said, is viable delivery of economic empowerment of rural and urban women and youth engage in the creative sector.
He added that it will help to ameliorate the current high rate of youth unemployment and migration as it will encourage and support creative business entrepreneurship in the arts and culture sector.
DG Ceesay explained that the modules for the course are divided into five blocks. Block one include induction, general principles, learning styles, case studies.
Block two will focus on marketing and business viability, learning about the market(s) testing feasibility. Block three is on project selection, idea into reality – implementation; business planning; costing etc while block four is meant for preparing business plans, designing and delivering a presentation. The block five is for the two to four weeks internship.
The Director General thanked UNESCO for fully funded the ‘entrepreneurship training in support of culture and creative industry development in The Gambia for small creative business for women and youth.’
Sheik Omar Jallow, Director of Creative and Performing Arts – NCAC said the training targets active 25 Gambian youths which will be selected from four creative sectors which involve music, film, literary art and fashion.
About recruitment and selection procedure, he informed that an information day about the training program will be held to promote the project while applicants that meet the basic criteria will be invited to take part in a selection event to talk about their ideas.
