Project Impact Report
- Title: theOBRAwebsite
- Operating Entity: OBRA Incorporated
- Project Lead: Nash Ang
- Institutional Partner: National Commission for Culture and the Arts
- Active Period: 2007 - 2012
- Original URL: http://www.obra.ph
- Archival Site: https://web.archive.org/web/20081107223256/http://www.obra.ph/
- License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
The Divide in Philippine Arts
In the late 2000s, independent artists in the Philippines faced steep barriers to sharing their work. Almost all commercial art galleries, cultural venues, and publishing houses were concentrated in Metro Manila. For artists living in regional provinces, independent theater performers, and self-taught painters, getting noticed required either moving to the capital or paying high gallery fees and sales commissions.
While international websites like DeviantArt were becoming popular at the time, they did not connect Filipino creators to local community projects or regional employment. Independent artists across the provinces worked in isolation, with no central public directory to showcase their portfolios, find freelance gigs, or organize during local emergencies.
An Open Directory for Cultural Workers
To bridge this geographic gap, OBRA Incorporated launched theOBRAwebsite in 2007 at the web domain obra.ph. The website was created as a free public portal where creators from across the Philippine islands could share their work directly with the public without middleman fees.
The website organized portfolios across five creative areas:
- Visual Arts: Free profile pages for emerging painters and sculptors to display their work directly to buyers without commercial gallery fees.
- Independent Film: A directory for indie filmmakers, videographers, and crew members to announce short film projects and post casting calls.
- Performing Arts: A regional listing for street dancers, theater performers, and choreographers from provincial groups.
- Literary Arts: An open digital space for scriptwriters, poets, and authors to share scripts and short stories.
- Jobs and Rakets: A community board matching freelance creators with graphic design tasks, translation work, and local production jobs.
Using Art for Disaster Recovery
Beyond hosting artist portfolios, theOBRAwebsite partnered with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts to coordinate the Artists for Crisis program. Led by NCCA officials Malou Jacob and Tessa Belleza, this national program mobilized creative workers to help survivors in communities hit by natural disasters and armed conflict.
The website hosted the Pinoy Artists for Crisis discussion group and volunteer directory. This online hub connected Christian, Muslim, and Lumad artists across the country, allowing them to organize relief trips and conduct creative healing workshops in evacuation centers.
Through this network, artists traveled to disaster flashpoints to help children and families process grief and trauma through painting, clay sculpting, music, and theater. After Typhoon Reming caused massive mudflows in Albay, artist Alma Quinto held workshops in packed school evacuation shelters, helping children who lost their parents and homes express their grief through collaborative fabric drawings and storytelling. The online network also coordinated open calls for the 2009 INFACE community education forums in Cebu, Davao, and Manila, and mobilized thirty artist-facilitators for a national disaster response training workshop in Dapitan in August 2011.
Real-World Gatherings
The website also helped bring online community groups into physical spaces. On May 31, 2008, OBRA Incorporated teamed up with Tanghalang Hulyo Beinte Tres Ink. to organize Buhawian: The Metro Manila Dance Idols on the open grounds of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
The festival brought together street dance crews from seventeen cities and municipalities across Metro Manila, giving neighborhood youth dancers a national stage to perform alongside recognized cultural institutions and broadcast media partners.
Media and Scholarly Recognition
The projects run through theOBRAwebsite and the Artists for Crisis program were recognized by researchers and national news outlets:
- Cultural Caregiving Research: Documented in 2009 by Dr. Leonardo Rey S. Cariño in a study on cultural caregiving for the Deutsches Institut für Erwachsenenbildung and ASEM Lifelong Learning.
- National News Coverage: Reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in September 2011, highlighting how regional and Lumad artists helped disaster survivors heal, and by The Manila Times covering the national crisis training workshop in Dapitan.
- International Disaster Manuals: Featured in 2013 by the Design and Creative Center Kobe in the Earth Manual Project, documenting the disaster response art modules developed by Alma Quinto.
Transition
By 2012, major commercial social media websites and smartphone applications became widespread, changing how creators connected online. After five years of serving as an independent community directory and crisis coordination board, active operations on obra.ph came to a close.
The community model and directory layout built on theOBRAwebsite laid the groundwork for later digital projects, such as the dance directory Dance Pinoy in 2009 and the overseas Filipino media network Pinoy Seoul in 2017.
Open Science Access
To preserve the record of this early creative network, the original platform documentation, community forum layouts, disaster response announcements, and directory listings are being surveyed and prepared for open-access preservation under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
This dataset offers source material for historians, art teachers, and community researchers studying early online creator networks, digital mutual aid, and community art therapy during disasters in the Philippines.
