To the Mayor and the Baguio Arts & Crafts Collective, Inc.

First, I would like to express my gratitude to you for the honor of being designated as the Creative Director of Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative City Festival 2019 and as Consultant to the Creative Desk from June to December, 2019. This endeavor has brought to the fore issues affecting the creative community that present opportunities, challenges and invaluable insights that could help us in our efforts to forward Baguio as a haven for art and culture.

Secondly, I would also like to share that in the last few weeks, the professional relationship between myself and the leadership of the Baguio Arts & Crafts Collective, Inc. (BACCI) has become untenable. And while the recent Council for Baguio Creative City meetings seem to have established the assumption that I am once again being designated as the director of this year’s staging of the festival, this unfortunate development regrettably renders that assumption unfeasible, BACCI being the officially designated lead private sector partner of the LGU for this particular project.

With this, I hereby submit to you the Terminal Report for the staging of Ibagiw: The Baguio Creative Festival 2019 in fulfillment of my final obligation as the director of the festival and as consultant to the Creative Desk. The report chronicles the journey we took in staging Ibagiw from conceptualization to conclusion. And in line with both my positions as festival director and consultant, the report also includes observations and recommendations on several areas of concern that I believe are vital to the development of Baguio’s creative community and economy.

Given the current circumstances, it is with much regret that I inform you of my decision to take a step back and preclude myself from further involvement in the staging of this year’s Baguio Creative City Festival to give BACCI a free hand to appoint a director that they can comfortably work with.

In addition to this, the facts that 1) the position of Consultant was essentially also meant to provide for artist representation in the Creative Desk and 2) my appointment was made possible by the endorsement of BACCI as the acknowledged organization that is supposed to represent the city’s artists and artisans, I also believe that delicadeza and prudence dictate that I also relinquish this official designation again to allow the organization to appoint a person more suitable to their preferences.

Thirdly, in view of all of the above, I also believe that my continued presence in the Council for Baguio Creative City, whose primary members are, or at least up until the conclusion of Ibagiw, were also the conveners of BACCI, may just get in the way of the harmonious working relationship that the committee needs in order to efficiently serve the interests of its constituency. Acknowledging my own deficiencies in working within the preferred parameters of its primary private sector conveners, I hereby forward my resignation from the CBCC.

Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to you, Sir, for your advocacy to uplift the local creative community, which I share, and for your sincere efforts in this area, which I shall continue to support in my personal capacity, both as a concerned artist and citizen of Baguio.

-KMA