By Yunus S Saliu
The Copyright Office of the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) recently concluded two-day awareness activities at Central River and North Bank Regions.
The activities took the form of workshops at Basse in URR and Georgetown (Janjanbureh) in CRR respectively for stakeholders in the copyright sector which include artistes, folklorists, traditional communicators, Djs, musicians and drama groups.
Each Region had a one day sensitization event to discuss copyright matters such as folklore, traditional Knowledge stakeholders and how creators of copyright can register their works as recognized in Gambian law.
In Georgetown, the event was held at the Kankurang Centre in Janjanbureh where 20 creators in the region attended the awareness raising activity. Participants were eager to know how to protect their songs and similar repertoire from theft or unauthorized use.
Fatima Camara and Aulda Sanyang of Copyright Office of the NCAC took their time to explain to the participants the meaning of Copyright and how it works.
They urged creators to work hard to create original works and register them with the Copyright Office under the National Centre for Arts and Culture.
They stressed that creators should try to base their activities on signed contracts to avoid confusion and not cleared information about who owns what (work).
In Basse, too, 20 creators including many Djs and FM radio stations attended the copyright the daylong awareness event.
However, at both regions, participants among other things encouraged NCAC to have representatives or focal points at the Regions for all activities to be embarked on by the Copyright Office, also, who shall be responsible for organisation/mobilisation of participants for Copyright awareness campaign, registration of folklore and cultural expression among other things for proper operations of the Copyright activities.