Tonight is the official launch of the Seychelles Arts Festival 2016, an event which will allow our artists to showcase their talents and promote their work.
According to the organisers, this year’s Seychelles Arts Festival (SAF) will feature the arts in a wider sense of the world, not just visual arts. It will showcase the island’s true cultural richness of artistic expressions, where artists promote and market their work and activities to locals and visitors alike.
Contrary to past arts festival, this year’s event will feature a mixed programme of music, comedy, poetry, exhibition, children’s entertainment among others.
Already some activities have started as a run-up to the festival. One such activity is a forum between artists and the press to discuss how the two parties can work together to promote different kinds of art work in Seychelles.
The workshop took place at the International Conference Centre Seychelles (ICC) on Wednesday in the presence of National Assembly members, the chief executive (CEO) of the National Arts Council (Nac) Jimmy Savy, different local media houses, members from the Association of Media Practitioners Seychelles (AMPS) along with local artists such as musicians, visual artists and poets.
The workshop enabled the artists to share their ideas and proposals on the best possible way forward, so that media houses can work alongside them in promoting and giving their work much needed exposure.
Several media houses in Seychelles such as Seychelles NATION newspaper, Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) and Today in Seychelles newspaper are already giving publicity to local artists by advertising their new albums or giving coverage to exhibitions.
However, some visual artists want all media houses to give more coverage to their art form.
CEO Savy pointed out that such a dialogue between media houses and artists will try and find a solution to how artists can work alongside journalists to promote their work.
“Every year artists come up with a new album or poetry and even a painting, but those artists need journalists to promote their work and create that bond so that their art work can get publicity,” Mr Savy said.
This year many organisations committed to promoting art in Seychelles are supporting the Seychelles Arts Festival – the National Arts Council (Nac), the Seychelles Musician’s Association (Seymas), Seylar (visual arts association), the department of culture and the theatre association of Seychelles among other devoted individuals.
Source : Seychelles NATION
