RP NEEDS CREATIVE PEOPLE TO FUEL ECONOMIC GROWTH - ANGARA

Senator Edgardo J. Angara yesterday stressed the need to cultivate and nurture the artistry and creativity among our youth to help meet the global demand for innovative people and to pave the way for much-desired economic take-off.

In a speech during the recognition rites of the UP College of Architecture, Angara pointed out that innovation and creativity are essential for sustainable growth and economic development.

"What is emerging today is an economy built more and more on people's right brains. Artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big-picture thinkers will reap society's richest rewards in our time," he said.

Angara noted that one-third of all the workers in advanced industrial countries worldwide are employed in the creative sector: science and engineering, research and development, arts, music, culture, design and aesthetics, or in knowledged-based professions like health care, finance and law.

The number of graphic designers alone has increased tenfold in a decade. More Americans now work as artists, entertainers and designers than as lawyers, accountants and auditors. Writers and musicians alone now earn 30-50% more than they did in the 1970s, he cited.

Angara also underscored the importance of 'design thinking' in solving the country's biggest challenges like climate change and other natural calamities.

"Our recent experience with Ondoy and Pepeng--and unprecedented flooding in Metro Manila--is a good exercise for innovative thinking. How do we disaster-proof our cities? How do we make sure that natural disasters don't turn into human tragedies and wreak havoc on our economies?".

The creative arts, he added, are one of the Filipino economic niches in the global economy. He, therefore, urged the architecture graduates to put their creativity into good use and challenged them to help build livable and sustainable cities propelled by extraordinary technological innovation, whose vibrancy and resilience are a magnet for investment and production.