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Sam Banda Jr is an art and entertainment journalist from the Times Group Media. For him, reporting on issues of arts and entertainment is just his inborn talent and a fruit coming out of passion. With no prior training on arts reporting, he says he has become a better writer due to his experience in the industry. But when it comes to trainings mainly on arts and entertainment, he has very little knowledge on the topic at hand.
“Personally, I report on arts and entertainment out of passion. Trainings are hard to come by and the perception out there is that arts, entertainment and culture is not news worthy. People would rather have other disciplines such as politics as a headline for news and this mind-set needs to be changed. Its high time people realised the importance of arts in the economic development of a country”, explained Banda.
Just like Banda, there are a lot of journalists in Malawi media industry who have little knowledge and skills on their particular disciplines. According to them, specialisation requires proper training and availability of resources which most of the journalists do not have access to.
Thanks to the Malawi National Commission for UNESCO in partnership with the Department of fine and performing arts at the University of Malawi that organised a training workshop on Art Appreciation/Criticism for entertainment and arts journalists in Malawi with an aim of building media capacity in arts reporting and reduce challenges that journalists like Banda face. The training is also part of the implementation of a cultural policy that launched its blueprint in 2018.
Stony Makunganya is the project Manager for the “Strengthening of the Institutional Capacities in implementing the Malawi cultural policy in line with the UNESCO 2005 Convention on promotion and protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” project at the Malawi National Commission for UNESCO. He says UNESCO recognises the importance of the media in promotion of culture in contribution towards the economic development of a country and the 2030 global agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals hence the support. He added that the Commission is conducting various activities while robing in different stakeholders such as the media to strengthen them in implementing the cultural policy.
Project lead Dr Catherine Makhumula Mtimuni who is also Head of the Department believes the training will help reduce the knowledge gap in the media when it comes to reporting issues of culture. She describes the training as timely and is hopeful the knowledge will be put into good use in as far as cultural policy implementation is concerned.
The one-week training encompassed components of journalism, music appreciation and theatre appreciation. The Strengthening of the Institutional Capacities in implementing the Malawi cultural policy in line with the UNESCO 2005 Convention on promotion and protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions project is funded by The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi and implemented by the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) in partnership with the Malawi National Commission for UNESCO.