PANAF members. Photo By Bayan Nalubwama
Creatives from Uganda Musicians Association (UMA), Pearl Wood together with lawyers from the foundation of Human Rights Initiative (FHR) and a research team have unveiled a research program that will help the Pan African Network of Artistic Freedom (PANAF) to execute their duties in advocating for entertainer’s rights.
PANAF Uganda is a joint initiative comprising of musicians under UMA, Film makers under Pearl Wood, researchers and law practitioners working together to promote artistic freedom in Uganda.
Addressing the media at the Uganda National Cultural Center on Thursday, Counsel Derrick Namakajo the secretary General of PANAF revealed that the team is to carry out a three months research purposely to identify all problems facing both creatives and their craft.
“The creative sector is a formidable and powerful economic and employment arm that deserves to be protected in all aspects through the artistic rights and freedom. Therefore; this research program will be carried out in three aspects ie; artistic rights and freedom amongst artists which will be led by Dr. Micheal Muhumuza, the general legal environment for artistic rights and freedom which will be led by Josephine Kankunda and Gender aspects within the creative sector. We need to get thorough data on the three aspects,” he said.
Speaking at the same presser, UMA General Secretary Phina Mugerwa said she is hopeful that the partnership will help speed up the process of solving challenges within the sector.
“With the research, we will reach to all the fifteen clusters of UMA across the country and having the legal brains on board shows that we have shifted our wars from shouting with mouth to papers,” she said.
Phina Mugerwa addressing the media. Photo by Bayan Nalubwama
Phina also believes that the success of PANAF will erase the trending narrative of artists being beggars.
“It will save us from being beggars. We have been ignorantly begging from people who give us part of our own portion yet we the artistes are the bosses,” she added.
Micheal Muhumuza, the team leader of the research team said the team has embarked on a three months research project on the state of artistic rights and freedom and the legal frame work regulating and governing the industry.
“We are going to use basically four methods which are the questionnaire, we have designed the questionnaire to reach out to very many people to get as much data as will be termed important. Another aspect we are going to look at is important persons or persons in the industry so we shall get data from these people through interviews,” he explained.
The team shall also look at the status of the artistic freedoms in the country and the legal frame work by using documentary analysis taking in count what is available through the documents, the laws available and how people are responding.
“We shall get a few stake holders with whom we have the same direction of thinking then discuss their thoughts and the experience in the film industry and how it can be useful going forward. We are also going to have a representation research where we shall reach out to everybody that we feel is important in this industry until we feel that we have gotten to the root of the matter,” he added.