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A senior artist, Hamayoon Khan, has announced that he will establish an academy in Peshawar to facilitate artists, music lovers and impart training to new entrants in the field.

Speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club the other day, the musician cum singer said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was a fertile land for music lovers and artists.

He talked about many known artists, musicians and singers from the province who achieved fame across the world.

He said there were no facilities for the artists to start their career or even improve their professional skills in different fields.

The successive governments, he said, had never paid serious attention towards development of this vital sector to encourage the artists.

Flanked by Laiqzada Laiq, Jahanzeb Malik, Najeebullah Anjum, Shazma Haleem, Bakhtiar Khattak and many other artists, Hamayoon Khan said the academy would be a place where the people could prove their talent in different creative fields.

“We will run the institution on self-help basis with the only objective to train fresh artists by holding seminars and short courses,” he said.

The other artists appreciated Hamayoon Khan for initiating work on the academy and expressed the hope that it would become a university for the art lovers in Peshawar.

They also talked about the problems being faced by the local artists and said that they (artists) should forge unity among their ranks to raise voice for their rights in an effective manner.

They said fine arts remained a neglected sector in the region during the past many years due to militancy, lawlessness as well as negligence of the successive governments.

The artists urged the government to pay urgent attention to problems of the artists on basis of merit so that the existing unrest among them could be removed.

They also assured their support to Hamayoon Khan for initiating work on the new project.

Originally published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2018