TARO at Stakeholders' Meeting to Discuss Arts and Culture Fund at Dar es salaam

TARO was invited to participate at the Stakeholders meeting to discuss the Guidelines on Arts and Culture Fund at Benjamin Mkapa Stadium, Dar es salaam on 26/09/2022. The meeting comprised of various stakeholders in arts and cultural sector including National Arts Council and Copyright Body of Tanzania. The meeting was initiated by Arts and Culture Fund.

Head of Fine arts Departmet at TARO- Mr. Gwalugano Lembulisi Ayubu adressed two essential issues before the audience in the respective meeting:-

(i) That government institutions shall not be eligible for the funds since artists and other private organizations can not compete with them and also the funds are very minimal.

(ii)That there should be equal ratio of destribution of funds among categories of arts. It has been a tradition of prioritizing music and film in lot of government opportunities. Therefore on these funds other categories of arts like visual arts and hand crafts need to be prioritized

Arts and Cultural fund are funds issued by the government to arts and cultural sector stakeholders as loans and grants to improve the sector. In the meeting, it has been witnessed that lot of artists are not formalized to be eligible for funds. Therefore, artists were required to register themselves to the relevant arts authorities, register their business names and comply with other financial laws.