The Regional Development Council (RDC) VIII recently approved the creation of the Eastern Visayas Regional Committee on Culture, Heritage, and Arts during its Fourth Quarter 2021 Full Council Meeting on 10 December via Zoom.

The committee will be tasked to formulate and monitor statistics on culture, heritage, and arts, and ensure that the Region adopts the Philippine Cultural Statistics Framework (PCSF).

The PCSF is a tool for organizing cultural statistics, providing conceptual foundation which enables the production and dissemination of cultural data, supporting research component in policymaking, and measuring the impact of culture and arts in Philippine development. It was established in response to the need for the country to formulate a widely acceptable set of cultural indicators that will systematize cultural development planning within the framework of national development planning and resource allocation.

The main goal of adopting the framework is to assess the contribution of culture to national and regional development so that culture-sensitive development policies can be formulated. The economic contribution of culture will be measured through the Culture, Heritage, and Arts Statistics.

The Committee will also be tasked with crafting of the Culture, Heritage and Arts chapter in the Regional Development Plan. The updated Philippine Development Plan (PDP) and Eastern Visayas Regional Development Plan (RDP) 2017-2022 highlights culture as among the major dimensions of human development and establishes that promoting Philippine culture and values is among the major thrusts of the country.

Once established, the Eastern Visayas Regional Committee on Culture, Heritage, and Arts will be lodged under the RDC VIII-Social Development Committee which will oversee its operations.

Article by: Knulp Aseo and Karen Reduban, DRD
Photos by: Allan Jay Quesada, Wikimedia Commons