NCCA offers grants for arts, cultural projects

By: Emme Rose Santiagudo

THE National Commission for Culture and the Art (NCCA) in its bid to preserve, develop, and promote Philippine arts and culture called on interested individuals, groups, organizations, or academic institutions to submit project proposals for its competitive grant program.

In a press conference last week, NCCA cultural heritage section head Lawrence Charles Salazar urged Ilonggos to submit arts and culture-related proposals.

“We would like to inform the public of an opportunity for them in the field of culture and the arts through our program. It is a major instrument of the government by which government exercises its welfare function when it comes to culture and the arts. We would like to invite the public to participate,” he said.

The NCCA Competitive Grant is anchored on its vision of the “Filipino culture as the wellspring of national and global well-being,” and is also aligned with the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022: Chapter 7 on Culture (Promoting Philippine Culture and Values).

The project proposals are categorized into arts, heritage, cultural dissemination, and cultural communities and traditional arts.

According to Salazar, most of the competitive grants cater on the upgrading of skills and enhancements of one’s knowledge for culture and the arts, like capability trainings.

“It’s really on the enhancement of human capacity. There is a good culture and arts sector if you have well equipped and well skilled cultural workers and artists that is why most of the grants cater on upgrading of skills and enhancements of your knowledge for the culture of arts. The grants would include training for museums, workshop on language, literature and cultural studies, regional creative writing workshop and film capacity buildings,” he said.

In Western Visayas, P2.5 million worth of projects were approved by the NCCA this year, according to Salazar.

The projects included assistance on the festivals of the municipalities of festivals in Oton and Nagpana, Barotac Viejo; establishment of a barangay reading center in Sapi-an, Capiz; compilation of Aklanon folkloric materials in Balete, Aklan; folklores of central cultural communities, and audio-visual documentation of indigenous cuisines of central cultural communities in Calinog, Iloilo.

Meanwhile, the deadline of submission of letters of intent and proposals is on July 31, 2019 and may be submitted to the Planning, Policy Formulation and Programming Division (PPFPD) at Room 5-B, 5^th floor, NCCA Building, 633 General Luna Street, Intramuros, Manila.

Guidelines and project proposal forms may be downloaded from http://bit/ly/NCAA2020Grants and http://bit/ly/NCAAProjectProposalForm. Proposals may also submitted via email: arts@ncca.gov.ph, heritage@ncca.gov.ph, dissemination@ncca.gov.ph, and traditional_arts@ncca.gov.ph.