By Khumbulani Muleya The British Council through their cultural economy programme has partnered with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in a hybrid three phase project.
The cultural economy programme supports cultural organisations, festivals, artists and creatives between Sub-Saharan African countries and the United Kingdom to create art, build networks, collaborate and develop markets and share artist’s work with audiences.
A UK-based youth-led radio station Reprezent Radio, local cultural professionals Page Poetry Alive (PPA) and Kay Media Africa will deliver a television game show called Cre8ive Challenge Television Game Show consisting of three competitive segments that will take place online and in-person.
The reality show is in audio-visual format with segments that involve skills training and two elimination rounds.
It comprises three teams and nine artists who will be competing and tackling challenges in real-time to create work online and in person whilst being filmed in front of a live audience.
The spectacle blends works of literature, digital skills, film and diverse collaborative art and is funded through the Scripts and Bars project, a digital content creation project that brings together 100 creatives from Zimbabwe and the UK to collaborate across the music and literature sectors.
The leadership training, community building and explorative work competition engages the creative arts for climate action.
Artists co-create interactive artworks, tell stories, and capture languages as part of this experimental and innovative project for climate action.
The show will be broadcast on the PPA website, YouTube channel and across their social media pages on July 23 and August 5, which is the day slated for the final.
The facilitator (PPA) is a local poetry collective that nurtures storytellers from page poets to spoken word artists with a focus on youth development and explorative work, while Kay Media Africa is a multimedia production studio and consultancy which specializes in animation, audio, video and interactive content.
The project aims to support income generation for young people through capacity building, skills exchange and decent remuneration using storytelling in diverse languages to create a better understanding of Southern Africa in the production of multi-media work.
The aim is to impact digital spaces using storytelling in explorative ways and create art that changes the way youth around the world view climate issues.
The project will run for the next two months and participants will be taken through three phases.
“We have three segments that we are taking participants through,” said an official from PPA.
“First we took them for orientation, game preparation and training.
“We then went into Cre8ive Class which is a series of talks with industry experts piloted via the WhatsApp social media platform.”
The game show features mentors such as iconic vocalist and guitarist Tariro neGitare, creative enterprise consultant Morset Billie, media personality and poet SoProfound.
Other major highlights of the show include the Cre8tive Huddle Up, a conversation platform to be hosted on Twitter space for all nine participants on July 14.
The Cre8tive Challenge Television Game Show will be supported by 25 of the participants who are involved with the Scripts and Bars project.
“On July 23 we will be having an elimination round called the Cre8tive Lab which will be hosted online with participants competing from different locations in the comfort of their homes.
Each challenge is doctored to fit within their environment and speak into climate issues,” said the PPA official.