Snicha conducts project to formalise status of artists |14 June 2023
Mr Andre addressing the gathering
A three-day consultative meeting on the ‘Status of the Artist’, a legal document that will help in developing the capacities of artists, artisans and cultural actors, and improve their social and economic conditions, is taking place on the three main islands of Mahé, Praslin and La Digue.
The first meeting organised by the Seychelles National Institute for Culture, Heritage and the Arts (Snicha) started yesterday on Mahé at the International Conference Centre and is being facilitated by Avril Joffe, an international expert from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).
Under the Aschberg project, each country must have a set of regulations and laws for artists and key people in the cultural sector.
Seychelles is one of twelve countries being supported to develop the rights and status of artists and cultural professionals.
These policies are targeting cultural professionals who work in the art sector such as performing arts, fine arts or crafts.
The secretary general of Snicha, David Andre, said the project in motion is an attempt to formalise the status of people in the cultural sector in Seychelles.
“For many years people in Seychelles have been saying they are artists and artisans, however there is no document to back them up which begs the question, ‘what is an artist?’ and this project will help formalise this,” he said.
Unesco’s representative, Avril Joffe, who is in Seychelles on a one-week mission to work on the project, said that the activity that is being held is in a form of a workshop to discuss the issues and restraints which artists are facing and to come up with possible solutions and policies to accommodate them.
“The idea is to really understand, from the artists themselves, what challenges they face. We want to look after them as a separate group,” she said.
She added that the feedback they get from the three workshops will be taken into consideration at the end of the programme, leading to the establishment of a law that supports Seychelles’ artists, and covering issues relating to working conditions, contracts, social protection and pension.
The expert, who will be in the country until June 18, will be on Praslin today at the Paradiso, Pension Fund Complex, in Grand Anse, and tomorrow she will travel to La Digue.
‘Status of the Artist’ falls under the UNESCO-ASCHBERG PROJECT, which was initiated in 1956 to support artistic creativity and diversity. The project was re-designed in 2017 to support the implementation of Unesco’s two instruments addressing artistic creativity, namely the 2005 creativity Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artists.
Diane Larame
Photos by Louis Toussaint
