12 Mar 2018

Coordinator of Thapong Visual Arts Centre says he is happy with overwhelming attendance of artists that came for the second installment of the entrepreneurship skills transfer workshop hosted at Thapong.
The workshop was by the ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development.

Speaking in an interview, Reginald Bakwena said the aim of the workshop was to equip artists with business skills and to also help them establish their own businesses for sustainability.

He indicated that the workshop had catered for 20 people but more people came.

“We are even thinking of hosting another programme before the month of June because we have been made aware of the huge demand for such workshops for our artists,” he said.

Bakwena stated that Thapong strived to avail the necessary tools for artists to fully establish themselves.

For his part, facilitator of the workshop, Tumelo Pheko said the creative arts industry could not continue to be sidelined as just being a hobby.

“This sector has so much potential to help diversify the economy and it is integrated to some other sectors like tourism and manufacturing, hence it directly and indirectly contributes to our economy,” he said.

Pheko said the aim of helping artists transform their talent into an economical enterprise was what the country should be striving for.

“We have so much talent in Botswana right from schools to those studying art to those that only have the talent and we need to encourage and teach them about being entrepreneurial,” he said.

He said at the workshop they taught artists various things amongst them how to register a business, management of finances, separation of business from the individual and marketing.

Pheko noted that artists were also encouraged to export their talent and how important it was to have a business entity when doing so.

He said it was important to have basic knowledge on how one would have an economical enterprise and that is where he comes in.

“I work for RobinWood Consultancy and I deal with entrepreneurial development and I must thank Thapong and MYSC, Gaborone District for having involved me in this workshop,” he said.

Pheko said he was also grateful for the participation of artists at the workshop.

“It shows that they are willing to learn and genuinely want to develop themselves into entrepreneurs.

We also helped them with information regarding institutions they can go to for funding and commercialise their talent,” he stated.

One of the participants at the workshop and also an artist, Kago Kgabaetsile said he learnt a lot at the workshop and was grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to be part of the workshop.

“I consider myself to be a business person, but after the workshop I realised I have been missing the basic fundamentals of running a business,” he said, adding that he had attended such workshops before but this one was different.

“We discussed a lot of things amongst them our target markets, advertising and I am grateful to Thapong and MYSC for having engaged Tumelo Pheko to help us.

He is a passionate man and during our interactions you could see that he really does care about entrepreneurship,” said Kgabaetsile.

He said most of the time, artists were considered to be poor, which was not the case.

“We just lack management and if we managed our finances and every other aspect of our businesses well, we could be somewhere and I plead with the powers that be to have more of such workshops to help us artists move up the ladder,” he said. ENDS