The Sunday Mail
Takudzwa Chihambakwe
They are the custodians of the arts and culture sector in Zimbabwe, but what they staged at the Harare Gardens on the eve of Africa Day revealed why the country’s creative sector is in such a mess.
To say the least, the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ)’s inaugural Culture Week Festival was a mockery to the arts sector, the personification of gross ignorance on how to plan and execute such events. For an event that was happening just after the Harare International Festival of the Arts, one would have thought that the custodians of the arts sector would have taken notes, but it appears they chose to reinvent the wheel.
The flow of events at the inaugural Culture Week Festival was, for lack of a better word, haphazard. The setup of exhibitors was really awful, it was as if the artistic director, if there was one, had just said anyone can set up their stall anywhere and things would just run without a properly curated format. But what was really the idea of this festival, which appeared to have been rushed and did not seem to incorporate many players in the arts fraternity except for a few budding musicians, craftsman and schools?
“Over the years, the NACZ has been running celebrations of the Culture Week as one day events at provincial and national level. But this year we thought we should change the format and have this special week celebrated in a festival format,” said NACZ, Harare official and one of the organisers of the festival, Oliver Chauke. “This was just a pilot of the planned event, which we are already planning to host over a period of three days in 2018. Another aspect to note is that, this new initiative allows the corporate world to partner with the arts for brand visibility during the festival,” he added.
However, though it might have been a pilot show that does not mean it has to be mediocre. They say first impressions matter. Chauke and team should have at least sat down and planned their event well and that way they would attract investors for future projects. Imagine, there were three platforms running events simultaneously, in very close proximity. What were they thinking? “We had three stages at the festival and there were all running events simultaneously. We did this so that we do not confine people to just one stage but to have them entertained as they moved around in the Harare Gardens.
“The idea we had was to have the festival run like a market place whereby we are promoting 100 percent local content and preserving our cultural heritage and anyone in the space could get the best of our local materials,” revealed Chauke.
Another aspect was that most of the senior players in the arts sector were not present at the event, which as highlighted earlier was seemingly rushed and poorly marketed. As to how they got their participants, Chauke said: “Well, we worked through the various arts associations that are registered with us. Instead of calling in for applications or approaching artistes in their individual capacities, we chose to just communicate through these associations. “Some associations responded and some didn’t. So those that responded are the ones you saw participating at the festival.”
Chauke also highlighted that NACZ had already started preparing for the 2018 festival. “After running this pilot, there was a lot of positive response from various stakeholders in the arts sector and some have begged us not to leave them out when we host the event next year.
“We are already planning out the marketing strategy for the three-day festival we intend to host in 2018, which will now see us having a more organised set up. Our key objective is to celebrate being Zimbabwean and create more platforms for artistes to showcase their talents,” he added.
