Beitbridge Stand Up and Be Counted

Beitbridge Town is my second home and love, hence the motivational title. I did not want to write this piece for fear of being accused of being impartial, but hey who better to write it, than me that is passionately involved with the town. In most cases when we see small towns in the papers it’s either there is a corrupt ZIMRA or Council official. In isolated cases of none white colour crimes, it will most likely be a crime of passion or just something weird.

Here is what is happening. Beitbridge comes to a standstill this weekend as far as the arts industry is concerned. I am not saying events do not happen in BB, but none has addressed the need for local acts to stand up and be counted. Falling under the Beitbridge International Festival of Arts banner and supported by the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust under the culture impacts programme, Beitbridge has got talent roars to life on Saturday. The idea is to get local acts to perform their pieces to a panel of judges and audiences. The judges will provide the expertise and audiences will be given a chance to comment on what they envision their top act as.

The whole process is in two audition and work shop parts, both happening prior to the actual festival and culminating in a final show during the festival which begins on the 22^nd of October and ends on the 24^th of October 2015. The hope is that with the auditions, workshops and audience comments we will see a more whole some artist come from Beitbridge. The extra push for doing it for the Beitbridge artist is prize money, though not much, a possibility for collaboration, a floating trophy, an opportunity to perform at a big stage with big artists and a video recording contract.

On the day of the talent show finals the local artists will share the stage with Peter “young igwe” Moyo. Beitbridge International Festival of Arts is in its third year this year. Over the past two years the gathering hosted top acts like Iyasa, Clement Magwaza, Midlands State University Music Department, Willis Wattafi and Alick Macheso in collaboration with Pagomba Café.

The theme for this year is “Big Art, Small Town” a clear show at intent of bringing top art to Beitbridge. Schools will not be left out as Drama and Dance workshops will take place in September. High schools will tackle drama under the watchful eyes of award winning theatre practitioners. The schools will be taught the A to Z of drama and be helped with theme treatment. The workshops also culminate in competitions during the festival. Primary schools will attend a traditional dance workshop which will focus on the Jikinya dance for this year which is Hosanna.

The idea of the festival is to entertain and also preserve culture. The schools will be encouraged to take up a local dance which is either Sotho or Venda as own choice. And in line with culture preservation a local Dumba group will exhibit at the primary schools workshop and showcase their Dumba culture at the festival.

The past few weeks have been busy for some of our arts comrades who have been up and down to Harare working with the Ministry of Education in creating an arts and culture syllabus. What does this mean for the arts? Well from where I stand its opportunities to teach arts at schools, after all we are the most experienced. I am sure as it begins we may get away with just being experienced as our knowledge of the field will do just fine. But with time (maybe a year or two) we will need papers to show we are who we say we are. Nurses have nursing school, Teachers have teaching school, their journeys are traceable, they may not know what we know but they have papers to show for it. It’s time we formalise things, enrol for a degree in arts management at Lupane or a diploma somewhere.

In the same light I had a conversation with seasoned actor and theatre director Memory Kumbota about the state of our arts. He mentioned something that was a little interesting. I thought to share. He said “never come into art from the wrong angle. Art has no short cuts, it is not politics, and it’s not about building a constituency that follows you no matter what”. He quoted Stanislavski “love the art in yourself and not yourself in art”. Until next week, be safe