Vuka Africa is touring the four provinces Midlands,Manicaland,Matebeleland South and Mashonaland West in a quest to empower artists, funded by Culture Fund and supported by Creative Actions.
Recently Vuka Africa was in Kwekwe to impart local artists with digital skills.
Program Coordinator Tawanda Maguze said the Artist Digital Up-skilling initiative is meant to equip artists with digital knowledge,increase their presence and enable to monitised their services and products through their digital accounts.
“The idea of the project is trying to create alternative avenues for artists to be able to bring in revenue for their works.At the same time,it also enhances their work broadly in terms of how they are handling their products and delivering them to their audience “,said Maguze.
So far artists who were trained under this project when it commenced in August last year are now increasing their presence on the digital spaces.
“There is a wave of artist,we have interfaced with now begining to interface more online,with more targeted objectives to increase their revenue and participate better in the e-commerce,ecosystem of content production.Artists that have been locked out for their usual audience continue to find other avenues to generate revenue.Artists can no longer go out there to their audiances live.They can start exploring alternatives online,so that they can continue with their lives,not only during Covid 19 but even beyond Covid 19 artists can still use these platforms as extensions to the physical stage and reach new audiences out there.
“We have noticed that art practitioners have connectivity challenges as data is very expensive.A lot of the things we are training require artists to be connected for long periods and as you know here in Zimbabwe,we are very limited as to how much time one can spend online because data is expensive.
“The response from Kwekwe artists was overwhelming,it is unfortunate that we can only accommodate a limited number but we found this as enriching process as Vuka Africa.We also learnt from their experiances. The Artist we are dealing with in this Master Class are not new to online spaces,they have been there and what we are simply doing is to create a platform to enhance what they are doing.
“We are quite gratefull to Culture Fund of Zimbabwe for supporting this project under the European Funded Creative Actions.We are hoping that they will continue to fund such initiatives.We are still really grappling with digital space across different sectors globally and I think artists should be leading from the front because the online space is about content and artists are content creators, content is key therefore artists are kingmakers”,said Tawanda Maguze.
Local artists who attended the training applauded Vuka Africa and said it was an eye opener.
“It was great,we learnt a lot and we have our eyes opened especially on digital skills”,said sculptor Herbert Mhlanga.
Arts Administrator Tawanda Jumo aka Bantuman I said “it was quite a great eye opener as artists needed to grasp the skills in the digital world, which we are all migrating to.The workshop was super and the facilitators were also on point and managed to keep us capitivated throughout the session.We also thank National Arts Council of Zimbabwe NACZ for bringing the training to our doorstep,we also managed to learn from each other as artists”.
“It is a noble initiative although it needs more time to understand the process of utilising digital spaces.Artists needs to be impacted with with digital skills to survive the industry as they lack the knowledge”,said Telson Migi.
The program started as a pilot project targeting theater in arts with two groups per province from the selected four provinces.It was later spread out to cover artists from other genres beyond theater
Vuka Africa is touring the four provinces Midlands,Manicaland,Matebeleland South and Mashonaland West in a quest to empower artists, funded by Culture Fund and supported by Creative Actions.
Recently Vuka Africa was in Kwekwe to impart local artists with digital skills.
Program Coordinator Tawanda Maguze said the Artist Digital Up-skilling initiative is meant to equip artists with digital knowledge,increase their presence and enable to monitised their services and products through their digital accounts.
“The idea of the project is trying to create alternative avenues for artists to be able to bring in revenue for their works.At the same time,it also enhances their work broadly in terms of how they are handling their products and delivering them to their audience “,said Maguze.
So far artists who were trained under this project when it commenced in August last year are now increasing their presence on the digital spaces.
“There is a wave of artist,we have interfaced with now begining to interface more online,with more targeted objectives to increase their revenue and participate better in the e-commerce,ecosystem of content production.Artists that have been locked out for their usual audience continue to find other avenues to generate revenue.Artists can no longer go out there to their audiances live.They can start exploring alternatives online,so that they can continue with their lives,not only during Covid 19 but even beyond Covid 19 artists can still use these platforms as extensions to the physical stage and reach new audiences out there.
“We have noticed that art practitioners have connectivity challenges as data is very expensive.A lot of the things we are training require artists to be connected for long periods and as you know here in Zimbabwe,we are very limited as to how much time one can spend online because data is expensive.
“The response from Kwekwe artists was overwhelming,it is unfortunate that we can only accommodate a limited number but we found this as enriching process as Vuka Africa.We also learnt from their experiances. The Artist we are dealing with in this Master Class are not new to online spaces,they have been there and what we are simply doing is to create a platform to enhance what they are doing.
“We are quite gratefull to Culture Fund of Zimbabwe for supporting this project under the European Funded Creative Actions.We are hoping that they will continue to fund such initiatives.We are still really grappling with digital space across different sectors globally and I think artists should be leading from the front because the online space is about content and artists are content creators, content is key therefore artists are kingmakers”,said Tawanda Maguze.
Local artists who attended the training applauded Vuka Africa and said it was an eye opener.
“It was great,we learnt a lot and we have our eyes opened especially on digital skills”,said sculptor Herbert Mhlanga.
Arts Administrator Tawanda Jumo aka Bantuman I said “it was quite a great eye opener as artists needed to grasp the skills in the digital world, which we are all migrating to.The workshop was super and the facilitators were also on point and managed to keep us capitivated throughout the session.We also thank National Arts Council of Zimbabwe NACZ for bringing the training to our doorstep,we also managed to learn from each other as artists”.
“It is a noble initiative although it needs more time to understand the process of utilising digital spaces.Artists needs to be impacted with with digital skills to survive the industry as they lack the knowledge”,said Telson Migi.
The program started as a pilot project targeting theater in arts with two groups per province from the selected four provinces.It was later spread out to cover artists from other genres beyond theater
