Frederick Philander
4 July 2008
Windhoek — The Head of the National Extension Programme (NAEP) and an arts education officer in the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture are presently touring some of the nine education regions presenting workshops to learners, teachers and arts tutors.
This is the first time that the two government entities are working in cooperation, reinvigorating rural arts in the country.
"We have just finished workshops and festivals in the Erongo and Kunene regions and are en route to the Hardap and Karas regions to also work with school culture clubs and training learners," said an enthusiastic head of the NAEP, Lucky Pieters.
He was appointed to his present post almost a year ago at the College of the Arts.
"It has been my fervent intention to the make the NAEP a result-oriented programme in which the 62 tutors are actively involved in upgrading the standard of art education in rural areas. Thus far, the programme has worked like a bomb involving all art lovers whereever we have been," said Pieters.
Finances permitting, he intends to stage the first national rural arts festival in the capital next year and rotate the works in the regions.
"During discussions with rural art teachers I have discovered that most of them have problems in implementing the school art syllabus properly due to the fact that the majority of them expect materials to be provided from the Ministry of Education. I encouraged them to make proper use of recycled materials found on any rubbish dump to practically teach art," said Samuel Amukette, who throughout the trip demonstrated to the teacher how to transform throw-away materials into useful articles.
According to Pieters, other regions will also be visited in the near future as part of the activities of the NAEP.
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