Music Executive of 3Music, Ricky Tenneson has said the New Patriotic Party’s 2020 election manifesto clearly reveals the leaders are ignorant as far as the needs of the creative arts industry are concerned.
The NPP officially launched their manifesto in the Central Region on August 22, 2020. It covered sectors including the creative arts industry.
According to the manifesto, the government when voted into power will set up creative arts fund to support artists, construct new theatres in Takoradi and Tamale, build a digital platform for artistes to make their products available to the global market.
The manifesto further indicated that they will establish large studios in Accra, Kumasi Tamale and Takoradi, among other things.
However, in an interview with ghanaweekend.com, Ricky noted that all the promises point to the fact that the leaders do not know what the creative space needs.
He believes an agenda to establish studios across the country is disappointing and that the manifesto is just a ploy to get the creative arts industry feel involved.
“I think it was one of those regular political routines where political parties need power, they put out documents to only convince you and for us, it’s really sad because, for some of the things they were actually looking to do, it is clear they don’t even understand the creative arts space and I’m a little disappointed in some of the people who are spearheading the whole creative movement.
“Because in this day and age if one of your main policies is to establish recording studios in Accra and Kumasi or wherever for music artistes to record, it’s unfortunate. It clearly tells how much you don’t understand the space,” he said adding that ” now a lot of people are recording in their home. A lot of people are doing a lot of their own productions by themselves.”
Touching on the digital platforms, he stated, “there are already several digital platforms which are even international and people want to subscribe to them so if you’re now going to create new digital platforms for people to sell their music, it’s just an idea but the bigger achievement is not going to be hard.
“It’s clear that (this is a case of) let’s put something together and then present to these people to make them feel like we mentioned them in the manifesto to make them feel they’ve been considered because over the years this is one of the industries that has spoken against some of these things that manifestos don’t mention the creative arts industry”.
He made mention of how the creative arts industry has been ignored all these years only to be included in the manifesto.
“When budgets are read, our industry is not factored in so it’s just because of our constant call for some of these things and that’s why they fake some of these policies just to make us feel as if we’ve been considered but if you understand the space that you’re in and if you really understand how the music industry works, it is clear that some of these things are not what we need to drive the industry. Clearly, the people at the helm of affairs don’t actually understand our space and it’s just another political gimmick to get people to subscribe to whichever political party,” he stated.
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By: Hajia Lamy Gates |ghanaweekend.com
