NCCA pilot implementing

'Cultural Center' in Bohol

TAGBILARAN CITY, October 12 (PIA)--If the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage (BACH) Council can make it in time, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) builds in Bohol its pilot project: a billion peso Cultural Hub. 

This surfaced after a meeting with the NCCA and the BACH Council including its key leaders last week at the Metrocenter Hotel. 

NCCA Deputy Executive Director Marichu Tellano herself explained that the Duterte Administration has opened avenues for culture and the cultural workers inputs to be included in the national development plan. 

With culture now allowing communities to play prominently in the development planning, Tellano and Governor Edgar Chatto revealed of an NCCA plan for the establishment of a cultural hub that works in the way the Cultural Center of the Philippines does. 

She said the cultural hub came out as a result of a series of consultations of cultural communities after the 2016 culture summit. 

Tellano shared that the NCCA intends to help organize and nurture arts and culture councils across the country, 

She pointed out that the summit brought up issues of igniting interest in the local levels as well as facilitating a venue for public engagement with artists. 

The idea was to bring to communities a cultural center which will not just be for theaters, but a resource and training center which houses various disciplines needed to study and develop cultural resources, Tellano, who has been an active partner in the most recent NCCA projects in of Bohol explained. 

The cultural hub has been conceptualized as a contiguous area where there is a theater for the experience of the formal stage, a black box theater for the alternative and the experimental theater, an amphitheater for an outdoor theater open-air experience. 

Other than those, the hub would also house a cinematheque to encourage local film producers to develop local productions, an innovations hall which could encourage young artists to get new ideas, a tourist information center, a creative industries hall, a souvenir shop, a hall for senior High School apprenticeship in local art forms. 

She also said part of the plan include putting up of indigenous games and sports center, indigenous peoples resource center, libraries, museum, galleries, cafeteria, gastronomy and culinary halls as well as dormitories. 

The culture hub would be in a complex and would be built with the flexibility according to available land area as the NCCA designer had it anchored on the size and shape of the lot, Tellano added. 

The cultural hub, now pilot planned for three regions in the country, could be first erected in Bohol, as soon as the preparations are right in place, Tellano stressed. 

Governor Chatto, during the meeting also encouraged the immediate reorganization of the BACH, after the resignation of the chairman due to health reasons. 

"Our first challenge is to be able to cope up with the documentary requirements, Gov Chatto told members of the BACH Council. 

The BACH Council immediately resolved inform the NCCA of its desire to get a hub in Bohol. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)

NCCA Deputy Executive Director Marichu Tellano met Bohol Gov Edgar Chatto and the members of the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage Council (BACH) urging of its immediate reorganization while offering the NCCA NEDA billion peso cultural hub project the government is piloting in Bohol. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)