New Body Surfaces To Fight For Artistes Rights
By Our Reporter
For a long time there has been grumbling in the creative and arts industry, with artistes lamenting about lack of copyright law implementation, which deprives of loyalties from their music.
Latest reports indicate that a new body, Pan African Network for Artistic Freedom (PANAF) Uganda, in conjunction with SELAM (Swedish INGO), have decided to come together to advocate for a friendly and accommodative working environment of all artistes, instead of musicians relying on government policies that regulate the artistic industry.
The main objective of PANAF Uganda is to promote Artistic Freedom and Rights.
PANAF Uganda is a nonprofit and nonpartisan artistic rights platform established by a partnership between Pearlwood (an umbrella organization of filmmakers), Uganda Musicians Associations – UMA (an umbrella organization of musicians) and Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), which is to start a three months survey to identify challenges in the creative and arts industry with hope of finding a solution.
The body launched a research program on artistic rights and freedom in Uganda while teaming up with a consortium of musicians, filmmakers and legal practitioners with an aim of assessing the status of artistic rights and freedom in Uganda.
We have established that the teams will focus on the state of artistic rights and freedom, policies governing the industry and how to protect their trade by involving all stakeholders in the country.
After the fact-finding mission from the research, the teams involved in the research want to awaken the implementation of law to bring positive change to the industry.
During a press conference on Thursday at National Theatre , PANAF secretary Namakajo Frederick, revealed that;
“After the three months’ research we shall react accordingly, either to try the litigation lane or advocate for amendment of the law or push for enacting of a new bill to regulate the industry.”
The teams involved in the research will formulate the solutions in regard to the challenges that will be identified from survey.