The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
SELECT winners of awards at this year’s ROIL Bulawayo Arts Awards (RBAAs) are in line for tours to Namibia and Botswana, among other countries as ROIL, the title sponsor of Bulawayo’s flagship awards, seek to spread Bulawayo artistes and their craft to nations where its brand can now be found.
United Refineries, through ROIL, was once again the sponsor of this year’s awards, held last night, pouring in $2,5 million in direct sponsorship into this year’s event.
In an interview with Sunday Life, United Refineries CEO Busisa Moyo said while they were happy with their contributions to the ROILBAAs over the past five editions, they wanted to amplify city artistes’ voices and help them get heard beyond the country’s borders.
“We have been thinking of doing tours. These are things that we have been discussing with our partners, Bulawayo Arts Awards trustees. Why not one day drive to Gaborone, Windhoek and take a few select artistes there. Just like our products are now in Namibia, we want to take our artistes there and profile them so that their talent and capacity is appreciated around the region,” he said.
Moyo said above and beyond their original intention of exposing local artistes to home-grown audiences, they believed that local artistes deserved international recognition because their work was up to standard.
“We saw the need for artistes, just like our products at ROIL, to be known the world over. Our commitment to the Bulawayo Awards is to get our artistes known.
Once their music, their poetry, their drama is known around the subcontinent then we can see them benefit directly from their work because we think the content is very good but it is just not known to the rest of the world,” he said.
Moyo said that the ROIL brand had benefitted a lot from its association with the arts and while officially they had sponsored this year’s ceremony to the tune of $2,5 million, they had made several other contributions to the awards indirectly.
“It has been a good journey and we have benefitted a lot from our association with the arts. ROIL is a conscious brand, a brand that is involved with the community and we thought one of the ways that we can make a difference and participate in was the arts and supporting creatives in the city.
Well, we have channeled significant amounts of money in supporting the arts directly and indirectly because there are other investments that we make around the awards but what tends to receive the public attention is the direct investment.
This year we are going to be putting $2,5 million directly but there are other activities that we will be supporting. We have done things like conscious corporate citizenship last year where we gave food hampers and we continue to look for various ways to support creatives and give them a profile,” he said.
Despite Covid-19 wreaking havoc on the arts calendar, Moyo said he was happy with the level of excitement generated by this year’s awards.
“Covid-19 obviously has affected the buzz that you would normally get around the awards. There is an impact that Covid-19 also has on the economy, on consumers and public gatherings which puts a bit of a cloud on everything,” he said.
