Blantyre City Council partners BAF for its Arts and Cultural Festival scheduled for October 7
In association with Blantyre Arts Festival (BAF) for a coordinated cultural heritage, Blantyre City Council has rebranded it annual cultural festival to Arts & Cultural Festival scheduled for Saturday, October 7 from 08:00am-17:00pm at the Kamuzu Upper Stadium.
Under the theme of ‘Celebrating Arts, Culture & Unity to Promote Participatory Municipal Management, the festival will be spiced up with a street carnival from the Civic Centre to the Upper Stadium.
Activities at the main venue include exhibitions mounted in pavilions and food stalls showcasing cultural products, clothing, medicines/herbs and cultural narration and there will also be performances by cultural dances troupes, drama/comedy and live band.
Announcing the development, Blantyre City Council Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dennis Chinsewu said the objective of the festival “is to give residents a platform where they can engage and be sensitized on the municipal services provided by the Council through arts and culture”.
“Blantyre City has over the years faced rapid urbanisation and high population growth that have resulted into a diversity of people from different cultural divide residing, doing business and visiting the City.
“This, therefore, calls for a coordinated cultural heritage in the context of National and Global agenda. As such the Council wants to revamp and sustain its arts and cultural affairs arm of governance agenda by re-introducing arts and cultural festivals, which are celebrations of the traditions of particular tribes of people or place.
“The overall objective of revamping and sustaining the Festival is to contribute to national efforts of enriching arts and cultural heritage in Blantyre City.”
Specifically, Chinsewu said they aim to achieve the following objectives:
- To entertain, educate and inform residents, visitors and the general public about arts and culture that is prevalent in Blantyre City from past and present and moving into the future.
- To engage residents, visitors and the general public to appreciate and embrace arts and cultural activities as they contribute to development.
- Promote trade and investments in various goods and services that are related to culture in Blantyre City.
- To promote unity amongst residents, visitors and the general public by instilment of cultural tolerance.
Chinsewu added: “Blantyre City Arts & Cultural Festival has been designed to capture relevance, purpose, inclusion and timing. The event is mainly outdoor, hence is ideally held during dry months of the year.
“To capture inclusiveness, this festival will be free for all, except for those with food and none food stalls to sell traditional food, drinks and cultural items, who will be charged a small fee.”
He added that five knowledge domains have also been captured in the design in order to sustain the festival, which include administration, design, publicity, operations and risk domain.
He took cognizance of the involvement of stakeholders in Blantyre City’s development endeavours as one of the key elements of its programmes’ successes over the years, saying: “In many previous events, stakeholders (corporate partners) have played different significant and positive roles, such providing financial, material and technical support while others have entered into specific partnerships with the Council.
“Blantyre City Arts & Cultural Festival will take the same approach as stakeholder engagement has always been Blantyre City Council’s usual success strategy in programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
“As a way of investment promotion, the Council finds the Arts & Cultural festival to be another important platform for engagement with private sector, civil society and other well-wishers who would play a major role in the programme life-cycle as they also harness both tangible and intangible benefits.”
For this year, the festival other stakeholder partners include Waste Advisors; Globe Internet; DEC Construction Company; Mapeto David Whitehead and Malawi Gaming & Lotteries Authorities (MALGA) but Chinsewu still appealed from support from corporate and other organisations.
On his part, BAF’s founder and Executive Director, Thom Chibambo — who have been organising their own version of arts festival since 2009 — said they were proud to partner with the City Council as the better way forward.
“I call this partnership as a milestone because all along, we have always worked with Blantyre City Council when we organised our festivals since 2009,” he said.
“Our relationship is not new but now its a milestone as we plan to make it even much better going forward as we will take a leaf from this forthcoming mega festival.”
Over the years, BAF has managed to spice their festivals with foreign artists such as Mutabaruka from Jamaica, Salif Keita from Mali and Rebecca Malope from South Africa.
Last year, bearing in mind that climate change is affecting the whole world — Malawi not being exceptional — BAF celebrated the 2022 festival under the theme; ‘Climate Resilience Through Cultural Preservation’, which held at Njamba Freedom Park.
Several amenities are provided at festival venues that include all health and security precautions by the Police services and other security agencies; mobile toilets; hand washing water buckets; sanitation and volunteers who collect litter.
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