Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(Local example)
In 2009, when the Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines initiated a focus group discussion on
creative industries in the Philippines, they defined the sector as embracing “a wide array of subsectors
including advertising, animation, architecture, broadcast arts, crafts, culinary arts, cultural/heritage
activities, design, film, literature, music, new media, performing arts, publishing, and visual arts.”
In 2010—the last year for which I have solid figures—copyright-based industries or CBIs contributed
more than P661.23 billion to the economy, according to the Intellectual Property Organization of the
Philippines. In GDP terms, the economic contribution of CBIs climbed from 4.82 percent in 2006 to 7.34
percent in 2010. Core CBIs comprising companies in the arts, media, and advertising largely accounted
for this surge. A corresponding rise in employment occurred in the sector, from 11.1 percent of the total
number of jobs in 2006 to 14.14 percent four years later.
There seems to be a greater awareness on the Philippine government’s part of the economic utility of our
artistic talent. In 2012, for example, RA 10557 was passed to promote a “national design policy”
highlighting “the use of design as a strategic tool for economic competitiveness and social innovation.”
(Closing statement/summary)
We need to see the arts as more than a frivolous diversion that keeps on drawing funds without producing
appreciable pay-offs, like an exotic and expensive pet you keep around the house, but rather as an area of
strategic and profitable investment that will yield both moral and material dividends. Just as we need to
develop more PhD-level scientists and researchers, we need to support advanced practitioners and
theorists in the arts, as they have every capability to achieve world-class status, with the right incentives.
Let me end with a message—perhaps even a plea — to those who hold the purse-strings of our
institutions. That journal, that play, that exhibit, that concert, or that workshop is always more than a
line-item expense. Supporting and patronizing these artistic endeavors is the price we pay to understand
ourselves in all our complex, and wondrously unquantifiable, humanity—and also, in ways you may
never expect, to create new knowledge and new wealth in many forms.
Reference:
Dalisay Jr, Jose. (2018, January 19). Sanghaya, Why the arts should matter. Retrieved from
http://sanghaya.net.ph/welcome/2018/01/19/art-should-matter/
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