Do Chi Nghia, a National Assembly delegate from Phu Yen, said after the 2021 Natural Cultural conference, Vietnam has witnessed changes in agencies and branches’ thoughts and actions on the development of the cultural industry.

Vietnam has a population of 100 million and high GDP growth rates of 5-6 percent per annum.

“Vietnamese like discussing hot issues and watching art performances. They also like new things and have great passion for literacy and culture. These are favorable conditions to develop culture and arts of Vietnam,” Nghia said.

He said the South Korean girl band has revenue of $13 million just after two performance nights in Vietnam. 

Under the Vietnam’s cultural industry development strategy approved in 2016, Vietnam strives to obtain total revenue of $16 million from performance art by 2020 and $31 million by 2030.

“As such, the two performances of the girl band alone had revenue equal to half of the total revenue of the all Vietnamese performing art,” he said.

According to Nghia, the leaders of the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the stadiums in the city cannot meet the requirements to organize such a large-scale performance.

Nghia, after analyzing the figures, came to a conclusion that there is vast space for Vietnam to develop its performing arts, if the problems can be solved.

He went on to point out that theatres don’t have enough artists, and artists have no theatre to perform. There are some theaters and art centers that have up to five facilities located on ‘golden land plots’ in large cities, but they only run one facility, while the other four lease for money.

Meanwhile, most art troupes have no theatre to organize shows. If they want to organize shows, they have to lease the theatres.

The other problem lies in the workforce of the industry. Many artists have to give up their job though they have been working for more than 10 years.

“Some actors told me that 18-20-year-old actors are needed to play the role of volunteers in the war, but there are only actors aged 40-50 available,” Nghia said, adding that it is necessary to give more opportunities to artists.

Nghia said when he visited art schools, he realized there were very few students majoring in traditional arts.

Tran Thuong