An interview with the host of ‘The Pundits’ show on GH One television who doubles as P.R.O of Charter house, George Quaye on issues in the entertainment industry concerning what has been the problem when it comes to event organization in Ghana has revealed a lot to Flex newspaper.
According to George, one can’t organize any event in their bedroom so one needs to choose a venue that makes it very comfortable and convenient to host one’s event be it a private, corporate or a national event.
“The absence of major venues for entertainment programmes has been a headache and many people have spoken about it. Even when you visit my blog (www.georgequaye.org.com) there is an article there that talks about event venues which Graphic showbiz highlighted some time ago.
When the Dome was shut down for instance a lot of us agitated so much and we spoke a lot about the comeback till today it is still not back and we are praying that it comes back.
Though we heard the rumors that it won’t come back we pray the rumors are false. The National Theater is just too small, the culture center was not built for theater events and the purposes we know it was built for are conferences. It’s not convenient for some of the things we do there.
We have been able to go and support Black stars. That’s the same way we can generate funds to put up the venue and the problem is that past and present governments seem not concerned about it. Countries all around the world that have taken the arts seriously are the ones that have got luck the most. Talk about United States of America, China, India and even neighboring Nigeria. So if we do not take our arts seriously we won’t go anywhere and it’s sad.
Look at even the celebration of our independence day…Why can’t we have such venues that have empty space? So when you are moving in with everything because it’s spacious like the independence square but it’s covered and there are a lot of them over the world like that? So even if we cannot put up an international auditorium, let us cover the ones that we have so that we can use them for some of these events. If we don’t take these things seriously, our arts are going to suffer and we can’t compete internationally,” he noted.
When George was asked the ideal venue for Charterhouse events he said: “we have several events which happen annually, biennial Night of Thousand laughs, Stars of the Future, Ghana Music Awards, Miss Malaika and many others. Ghana Music Awards for instance is an indoor even because we hold it in the rainy season and we know our whether calendar, so it will be quite silly to take the VGMA to a venue like Accra Sports stadium and organize it there.
However if the stadium and the Independence Square were covered then you can host an event like that. Though when you can host an event like that, that needs a proscenium stage, there are theater shapes, theaters in and around. It’s like National Theater, a stage that gives you a proscenium stage, a stage that has the backstage and everything.
When he was asked if Charter house was planning of building event venues, this was what he had to say: “It hasn’t come up at corporate level, we haven’t discussed it but keep everything that things like even venues is not a kind of business venture that you will lose. If you invest in building an event venue, there is no way you can lose if you manage it properly.”
Obviously, the problem of lack of event venues in the country which has been hanging on the necks of the stakeholders needs to be addressed until it is solved.
