KOTA KINABALU: University College Sabah Foundation (UCSF) successfully organised a closing ceremony known as Borneo Art Newcomers (BANCO) Vol. 3 at Tan Sri Azman Hashim Gallery, here in University Malaysia Sabah.
This is UCSF’s first outdoor event exhibiting artworks of trainees under Program Khas Anak Negeri (PKAN) Sabah 2022.
In that event, 36 trainees received their Certificate of Completion after undergoing 8 months of training. The art training covered various short courses such as Visual Art of Catan, Visual Art of Sculpture and Creative Art of Botanic Batik.
PKAN Sabah was funded by the Federal Government under Prime Minister Department to help Anak Negeri or Bumiputera Sabah in human capital development, land acquisition, infrastructures and agriculture among others. PKAN Sabah aimed to complement the effort of reducing poverty incidence and to increase the living standards of Sabahan. The PKAN programme was in line with the Malaysia’s 12th Development Plan (2021-2025).
The PKAN programme offered by UCSF focused on providing basic skill trainings for school leavers. Most of these students were students with great interest in art work. UCSF aimed to train 1000 youths of Sabah by the end of the year of 2025 under this programme.
For 2023, UCSF expect to offer various courses such as Sustainable Farming with Compost, Photography, social media and Website Development, Digital Software, and Entrepreneurship as a Career among others. This was to adapt to changes and rising demand post CoVID-19. As such, UCSF would start recruiting participants for March 2023 intake.
According to Madam Nurul Fatiha Jalaluddin the Coordinator of Program Khas Anak Negeri Sabah, the program helped many youths to sharpen their talent from ‘zero to hero’.
“They were able to produce good artworks within a short period of training and this was an achievement that I can proud of. UCSF always known to be a great place for art training and popular among the art community in Sabah.”
The Vice Chancellor of UCSF said, the UCSF PKAN programme had significant impact in producing students with art skills. With a strong personal coaching-approach the students not only gained artistic skills, but also ready to market their products.
“Over 500 students have been produced so far and some have been progressing well in their profession as artist. I hope more will be produced in coming years. In this regard, I would like to thank the Prime Minister’s Department for its continuous support through this program.
