The National Arts Month 2023 highlights the Filipino artistic excellence, uniqueness, and diversity in art, heritage, and culture across the archipelago.

The annual celebration is being lead by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and usually commemorated with a series of performances, lectures, talks, and a variety of artistic and cultural engagements.

This year’s theme is “Ani ng Sining, Bunga ng Galing.” The theme aims to immerse Filipinos in diverse cultural expressions and celebrate the bountiful harvest from the Filipino imagination. According to NCCA, “galing” refers to excellence in the arts as both a source of bounty despite challenging times, and a product of the passion of Filipino artists and cultural workers.

In celebrating National Arts Month this year, “galing” alludes to artistic excellence as well as underscoring the capacity of the arts to heal, rebuild, and restore in a post-pandemic setting.

The National Arts Month 2023 is the 32nd year of celebration. It was institutionalized during the term of then President Corazon Aquino through Presidential Proclamation No. 683 in 1991 declaring February of every year as National Arts Month.

The Commission has lined-up activities both online and face-to-face.  The opening ceremony is set February 12, 2023, at the Rizal Park Open-Air Auditorium. The program will showcase various performances, workshops, poem and story reading, and film excerpts, among others from the seven art forms, announced by NCCA.

There will be a walking tour and workshops on visual arts, action-song for theater, dance, indigenous music, short film using smartphones, and spoken words at 2:00 to 4:00 P.M., it added.

This will be followed by performances from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. which will feature Joey Ayala and Kalinga Music, and artistic activities like spoken word poetry, film showing, classical guitar, rondalla, and theater performance, among others.

The National Arts Month celebration also extends to March with the Ani ng Dangal (Harvest of Honors) awarding. Last year there were 58 awardees.

The Ani ng Dangal recognizes artists, cultural workers, and works that have earned international awards and accolades during the past year in nine (9) categories: Architecture, Cinema, Dance, Dramatic Arts, Literary Arts, Music, Visual Arts, Folk Arts and Broadcast Arts during the past year.