No more room for art for arts’ sake

16 Aug, 2015 - 04:08 0 Views

The Sunday News

This year the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust distributed over $1 million to local arts projects under what they call the Culture Impacts Programme. One million dollars is a lot of money in any part of the world. One million dollars in Zimbabwe surely has to have a serious impact not only on local artistes’ lives but also on Zimbabwe’s cultural and artistic landscape. As the winning projects are being rolled out we wait, with bated breath, to see their impact, particularly on people’s lives and Zimbabwe’s cultural landscape.

According to The Culture Fund there were more than 500 applications for the Culture Impacts programme and only 41 projects were successful. Honestly speaking most of the grantees on the list are credible individuals and organisations that have footprints that can be traced for years. It is only the obvious imbalance in terms of regional representation that continues to be the cause for concern. But again that is an issue for another debate.

Our interest today is the route taken by Culture Fund this year, particularly the focus towards transformative art. Could this be the beginning of the end for art for arts’ sake? We know for years there has been debate about the place for art for arts’ sake in Africa considering the serious issues around development that our art is supposed to raise. Should artistes focus on creating art for the sake of entertaining people and make them forget about their problems? Should artistes use scarce resources to make art that has no intention of changing people’s lives? These are some of the questions that rush to the mind. The current thinking is artistes should not undermine the power of art and that they should use their art to transform communities around them.

For more than 10 years the Culture Fund has been the hope of many artistes who saw a career in the arts — artistes who are more interested in creating art but not necessarily art to change their communities and the world. The re-focus by Culture Fund will surely see many of these artistes being thrown out of the funding bandwagon. The unavoidable consequence is that many arts and culture organisations will evolve into civil society organisations — perhaps this is also the beginning of a visible creative civil society sector and the formalisation of arts in this country.

To be honest The Culture Fund was probably one of the very few, if not the only funding body that seemed to understand the need to support art in all its forms and for all its purposes. With focus on art as a means or “medium for stimulating development” and emphasis on results and impacts it surely means artists must adapt or starve to death, particularly those artists and institutions that have been more into art for art’s sake.

This re-focus will have a serious impact on many local festivals and other platforms for cultural celebrations. As we write this article we doubt very much if Shangano Arts Festival in Hwange will take place this year. We also see the same fate for Rainbow Arts Festival in Gwanda, Midlands Arts Festival, Hurungwe Arts Festival and others who had relied heavily on the generosity of Culture Fund. What it means is re-focusing and embracing the fact that local artists have to focus on issues of development and use their art to transform their communities. There is no other way and this year has been a serious wake-up call for many artistes.

On another matter we recently attended a transformation workshop conducted by Stop to Start as part of the package for winning a Nama award. The workshop was a life changing experience that we recommend to all those who have not met Mr Zwelibanzi Ndlovu and his team. Most Bulawayo artistes need a mindset transformation and Stop to Start has a tool for that. Let us get ourselves together and get the stop to start team to come and transform our thinking and the way we do things.

 

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