Raisedon Baya
A FESTIVAL is a location, an environment and a setting where artistes and creators can present their work with a larger degree of artistic freedom. This work can either be new or old. Festivals, across the world, have long been working across borders and cultures celebrating human creativity and diversity. Festivals have always been about inspiring artistes to work towards another level and giving the ordinary festival goer an experience to savour for a long time until the next festival comes.
Arts and culture festivals are always about fostering an exchange of knowledge, helping artistes find each other and in the process find new markets and also to generally keep the arts fraternity informed about new developments in their sector. Add to that, festivals in Africa and among them Intwasa Arts Festival, have always seen and projected themselves as platforms pushing for the democratisation of arts and culture and discovering new/alternative voices.
A few weeks ago Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo announced its dates and theme for the 2017 edition. The dates are 28 to 30 September and the theme is immortalize. Obviously the festival will be much shorter than previous years and editions. The reality is that the environment is not conducive for a weeklong festival, especially a festival that curates more that’s half its events for free. This kind of model is not sustainable in today’s economics. It is important to strike a balance between passion and business, especially when running a festival. Also chances of the festival’s survival are high only when the festival is run like businesses.
This year’s shorter version therefore comes more as an experimental model that hopefully will make the festival sustainable but still enjoyable. This thinking is also summarised in the theme Immortalise. The theme is basically a cry for survival by the festival against a background of a vanishing support system — donor flight, Government’s lukewarm attitude towards arts, and a change of priorities by those who have previously been supporting the arts. As a result of the prevailing challenges arts and culture has fallen into the bag of luxuries instead of the one for necessity. The theme is also an appeal to everyone who has had a good experience at and with Intwasa to try to immortalise those memories and in the process immortalise the festival itself.
Three years ago Zimbabwe had over 35 festivals sprinkled around the country. It was exciting as there were more options for artists. Unfortunately, most of these festivals have been parked, or have died a natural death. Out of the more than 35 festivals that were there three or four years ago only less than five happened last year. This year, six months into the year, only the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa) has taken place. The hope is that Shoko Festival, Intwasa, Ibumba and Voices in Colour will take place from September to December. If these happen it will be a great miracle once again. This is so because festivals all over the country are facing serious challenges and they have actually become an endangered species that need an intervention — a Government financial facility to help them pull through these difficult times. Maybe something like Command Festivals. If we can have Command Agriculture we might as well have command festivals.
There was a time I used to think that most festivals were the same, that most are going through the same challenges. How wrong I was. Festivals differ according to their location and objectives. For Intwasa one of its revised objective is to link city narratives to the festival. This is so that the festival’s identity is heavily linked to Bulawayo. The other revised objective is to promote the platform as one for collaborations, between artistes, and between communities in Bulawayo. It would be very sad if Intwasa does not happen this year!