13 Jun 2017

Creative artistes have been encouraged to sell their art to the world so that they can create wealth for themselves.

This was said by Mmina Gaebonwe, director of Em Models in an interview recently, after hosting an Art and Creative workshop in Gaborone.

Gaebonwe said Batswana still lacked the know-how of selling their products to the international market, and as artistes, they needed to turn their ideas into wealth.

She said anything that comes to the mind of an artist can be turned into a product or a service and be sold to make a living.

“This is what has been missing in Botswana. We create, but we don’t know how to sell. We should be able to get our products to markets in Paris, London and so on. There are a lot of investors who are willing to buy African contemporary arts,” she said.

Gaebonwe emphasised that creative artistes needed a creative ecology, a concept she explained as any place where a population has sufficient resources to be able to purposely turn ideas into wealth.

She stated that the main challenge in Botswana was lack of resources, adding that it was high time government and all other relevant stakeholders start investing in creative arts to boost opportunities for artistes in the country.

For her part, a representative from Copyright Society of Botswana (COSBOTS), Boitumelo Monageng commended the organisers of the workshop stating that such workshops promoted cultural exchange, wealth creation and facilitation of efficient information-sharing that would equip creative artistes with skills and knowledge so they reap rewards and value from their works and talents.

“This resonates well with the COSBOTS mission of empowering creativity,” she said.

The society, the sole collective management organisation in Botswana, was established through the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act in 2008 and is mandated to license and collect royalties from users to distribute to copyright owners.

She said COSBOTS strove to provide valuable services to the world of music, literary works and visual arts by rewarding creators for the use of their work. ENDS