A day’s Cultural Initiative Support Programme (CISP) Consultative Workshop on Database ended in Koforidua on Thursday. Forty participants, including all Regional Directors of the CNC from the Southern Sector of the Country attended the workshop, aimed at seeing how best to gather information on Culture in Ghana, like cultural ecological sites particularly palaces and to see how best to develop them. Mr. Francis Kingsley Obeng, Eastern Regional Director, CNC said the purpose of the CISP was very laudable because the country’s cultural industry was being kicked to the background due to inadequate funding and encouragement. He said for a society to develop, there was the need to consider the culture of the people as the basis, for culture was everything that makes up the entire life of a people. Mr Obeng said every culture had a right to respect and preservation, for, “it is by a people following out their own culture and raising it to the highest possibilities that they can make any meaningful contribution to the growth of their communities”. He said, the culture scene in the country at the moment evinces a gross and undue affection by Western Culture “and there arises the necessity more than ever before, for a stronger defense of our culture in this stupendous rush of change in our modern times”. Mr. Obeng said traditional carvers, porters, blacksmiths, weavers and others whose designs had given the Ghanaian the identity of belonging and self esteem, had enjoined a place of pride in the society because it was their creative activities that the culture of the people was manifested and must therefore be given adequate resources for their identification, development and promotion. He said cultural events, historic buildings and monuments attracted visitors and tourists and strengthen a special segment of cultural tourism, adding that cultural tourism was presently an important economic factor. The Regional Director said the Performing Arts also educate, inform, communicate, entertain through the medium of theatre, drama, dance, music, poetry, libation, dirge and also needed a great deal of financial support. Professor George Hagan, Chairman, National Commission on Culture called for the integration of culture in all aspects of national life to help accelerate national development. Source: GNA