Projects in Development

Arts Africa UK presents: an opportunity for shows to be considered by arts and community organisations in the UK and Africa

If you have a production that you are looking to tour in Africa or the UK, or are looking for a partner organisation for a project you are planning, contact us at : info@artsafrica.org.uk

Tour Ready Productions

SOUTH AFRICA & SWAZILAND 2009 - A tour with the Embroiderers’ Guild

A journey through crafts and rural AfricaJoin Lesley Robin on a new journey to South Africa & Swaziland. Our journey includes the important cities of Durban and Cape Town, but mainly focuses on the rural countryside. . Visits include Table Mountain, Bo-Kaap and the Malay Quarter with its brightly painted 19th century houses Throughout our travels visit markets and self-help projects focusing on crafts… handmade candles, embroidery, weaving, recycled glass. Come discover the vibrancy and spirit of Swaziland and the New South Africa, a truly “Rainbow Nation”.For more information, please contact Annie Franz at the Embroiderers' Guild 020 8943 1229 ex 36 or

Email: afranz@embroiderersguild.com

Lucky Moyo and U Zambezi - "Come - Unity"

Available for booking to Arts Centres, Festivals and Events.

The show consists of music, songs and dances from Southern Africa.

For full details about U Zambezi go to: http://www.uzambeziarts.com

U'Zambezi Arts are a UK based performing arts ensemble that specialises in songs and dances from Southern Africa. The group’s membership draws from arts consultants, composers, dance and music educators and even arts managers who all come together simply because they love the art of performing.

Apart from general public shows at festivals and theatres, UZambezi Arts does a lot of education and community work that looks at the arts beyond being just a form of leisure and entertainment-but a powerful vehicle for addressing social issues.

Lucky Moyo - Workshops

Available to tour with workshops relating to Cultural Diversity, Citizenship, Southern African music and dance and other subjects.

Workshops are suitable for :

• Schools, colleges, universities
• Arts centres, venues, community centres
• Festivals, events, media
• Hospitals, retirement homes, prisons, churches
• Organisations in industry, public and private events, commissioned works
• NGOs/Charities and Government agencies (national and international).

For full details go to: http://www.luckymoyo.com/artsed.htm

Waiting For Thandiwe - Black Curtain Theatre Movement

Available for touring UK and Africa 2009/10 "Waiting For Thandiwe - A Romantic Comedy". The company are seeking partner organisations.

‘Waiting for Thandiwe” highlights a young man’s identity crisis upon his arrival in Cape Town, a bigger city to his hometown, King William’s Town. He falls in love with Thandiwe, a worldly and refined woman who doesn’t speak his home language! He is now back home for the varsity holidays and Thandiwe is making her way there for a visit. They have never interacted within the setting of his township and he is in a flat panic! He muses on how best to present himself & morphs in varied “alter-egos” in anticipation…

For more details about Black Curtain Theatre Movement see Africa Consortium Members page.

The Harder They Come

Following its West End run, The Harder They Come is available for International touring 2009 -2010. The company will be in Toronto from July 21st - August 23rd

Kerry Michael’s superb production faithfully distils not just the movie’s music and characters, but also, somehow, its soul. – Evening Standard

For further details go to: http://www.ukarts.com/news.asp

Co-production Elephant from the Market Theatre (Johannesburg) and Dodgy Clutch(Hull)  remounts for International tour

Elephant is a spectacular collaboration between the Newcastle-based visual theatre company Dodgy Clutch and the world-renowned Market Theatre in Johannesburg. It has already been a huge success in South Africa and is now available for touring the UK.

Following the success of the recent UK tour, Elephant is available for UK and international bookings in 2009 and 2010.

For further details go to: http://www.ukarts.com/details.asp?ID=126

Seeking Partners

The Hawth, Crawley is planning 2nd Going Global Project and looking for culturally diverse work

The Hawth (Crawley) is currently putting the finishing touches to its Grants for the Arts application for the second round of their Going Global project, due to showcase high quality culturally diverse work from the UK and beyond between 2010 and 2012. In order to increase its chances of success and allow accurate budget planning, The Hawth would like to invite companies/artists wishing to be included in the programme to tell us about their future projects.
The first round of Going Global in 2006-08 was very successful, both in terms of quality of the work presented (96.3% of the surveyed audience said they would recommend this type of work to their friends/families) and in terms of audience development: audience surveys revealed that not only it drew new audiences (up to 12% of the respondents were first time attenders to the venue) but it also attracted a wider cross section of cultural backgrounds and a larger proportion of under 30s.
Should you want your project to be considered for inclusion in Going Global 2010-12, please send a brief outline as well as costings to Lelia.Greci@crawley.gov.uk (please note that your email will be rejected if heavier than 250 KB as inbox size limited).

Full promoter packs are best sent by post to:
Lélia Gréci, Arts & Events Officer, The Hawth, Hawth Avenue, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 6YZ http://www.hawth.co.uk/

We look forward to hearing from you!

Eastern Africa Theatre Institute Intercultural Performance Collaboration - A Conceptual Consideration

1.0 The Idea:

Eastern Africa Theatre Institute (EATI) is a regional network of theatre practitioners in the eastern zone of Africa. The Institute was established and registered in the United Republic of Tanzania in 1999 to promote theatre as a profession.

Currently EATI is seeking to create a joint collaborative programmatic arrangement that would facilitate exchanges among theatre practitioners/groups/companies between the greater Eastern Africa region (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Southern Sudan) and UK/Brazil/USA. Areas of mutual artistic interest would be used to form the basis of a negotiated engagement and programmatic design. The envisaged collaboration to focus on long term-structured artistic partnership between the two regions with defined goals that may include:
i. Improvement of performance knowledge, traditions, forms, content, emergent trends among theatre practitioners (including Theatre in Education and Theatre for Development) from both regions.
ii. Enhancement of professional expertise among the performing practitioners through joint workshops, attachments, apprenticeship, seminar.
iii. Joint creative performance devising, presentations etc
iv. Joint organization of periodical festivals as well as residencies covering both creative and technical aspects of performing arts.

2.0 Collaborative Organizational Framework: To be designed under a joint programmatic management consultative framework. A representative committee of as few as 4 appointees could overseer issues related to:
- Operational policies
- Administrative governance processes
- Programmatic formulation
- Resources Mobilization
- Activities Implementation modalities
- Evaluation and review processes

3.0 Definitive Principles of Cooperation/Collaboration
Fundamental principles governing the collaboration should be suggested, widely discussed in details and adopted accordingly. Once adopted, they should function as pillars of support that ensures continuous strengthening of the collaboration.
A negotiated instrument can be authored to summarize all the identified intentions and commitments. It could take the form of:
i. A memorandum of Understanding/Association
ii. Joint Collaboration Engagement Protocol
iii. Collaborative Rules of Engagement.

In it, wide ranging issues must clearly be provided with shared meanings, procedural processes and to a certain extent some kind of irreducible basics. Such wide ranging but important concepts of Mutual Respect/Recognition, Equity and Conflict Mitigation/Resolution etc as they may relate to the Collaboration must be provided with some basic explanation.

4.0 Activity Clusters:
i. Twin-ship/Trio-ships Exchange: Two or more theatre arts groups/companies drawn from each of the two regions are partnered to explore closer creative long term exchanges that may include exploratory workshops, performance research, creative devising processes, joint productions, performances, tour etc.

ii. Skills Development: To cover activities that are designed to implement cross-exchange practitioner advanced learning processes with a view to improving artistes’ professional expertise and exposure. The trainings may take the form of Introductory/Advanced/Master classes, workshops, apprenticeship, attachments etc. Exchange of skills and expertise also falls under this category.

iii. Festivals: Jointly organized, managed and hosted between the collaborating organizations in successive defined period of time rotating between the two regions. The Festivals should be used as avenue through which:
i. Theatre arts practice is celebrated
ii. Opportunities of showcasing emergent best practices of performance are made available.
iii. Reflections on practice, emerging trends as well as future plans are considered through symposia, workshops, round table debates and discussions.
iv. Reaching out to other interrelated social sectors with the aim of furthering the profile of performing arts.

Within the emergent Collaboration, avenues must also be provided through which other emergent issues of common interest related to performance, arts and culture in general could be considered for common action.

5.0 Some of the EATI Experiences:
i. A 4 year long successful collaboration between Sweden and Eastern Africa known as Performing Arts Cooperation between Sweden and Eastern Africa (PACSEA)
ii. Hosting a continuous rotational bi-annual regional theatre festivals drawing artistes across the region and the world
iii. An Associate member of International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA) with members who sit in the Executive Committee of IDEA.

6.0 For More Information:
Visit the EATI website: www.eatinst.net
Or Contact:
The Chief Executive Officer
Eastern Africa Theatre Institute
POSTA SACCOS House 5th Floor
P.O. Box 77493
Dar es Salaam
Tanzania.

Email: info@eatinst.net

Nelson Mapako - Iphi'Africa Project

We are looking for a dance company that we can collaborate with in putting up a Dance drama production. Groups from all over the world that are interested can get in touch for more information.
We are looking at collaborating with up to six artists to create a cast of about fifteen. If you are interested get in touch at pakos07@gmail.com We are based in Swaziland, Africa.

"IPHI AFrica" (literal translation "Where is Africa") is a workshop project exploring the art of dance drama while tackling the challenges of Africa. it is being done under the Swaziland Theatre for Children and Young People. The first production, which is a collaboration of artists from Swaziland and Zimbabwe, was presented during the Africa Human and People's rights conference in April 2008 in Swaziland.

The prodcution is a result of some reaserch on Climate change in Africa and Human trafficking (Women and Children), as well as the challenges of HIV and AIDS. The production has a great potential of being workshoped further and presented to the global audience.

We have since developed it from the original fifteen minutes to forty five minutes which we are currently workshoping. The production is entirely told through dance movement, mime, traditional and contemporary music and percussion. it is highly based on the principle "don't tell but show", allowing the story to unfold in a non verbal (dialogue) approach.

SPAT to host Festival in Lesotho in March 2009

A festival is being planned in Lesotho by Consortium member SPAT as part of the Support the Arts Campaign(SAC) which launches this month and in which they are partners with Black Star Productions and Alliance Francaise.

The Festival will take place in March 2009 and will feature performances of UMOJA(spirit of togetherness) the award winning South African Musical, as well as other Lesotho and South African based companies, including SPAT.

SPAT has issued an invitation for all companies and artists who might be interested in appearing at the Festival to contact them.

For more details contact the Artistic Director Mahono Mahono at spatarts@yahoo.com

Nanzikambe Arts: Culture in Motion(Malawi)

Nanzikambe Arts www.nanzikambe.org- the latest African company to join the Africa Consortium, is looking for partners in a project that is already under development in the UK with the Soho Theatre. African partners in this project are The Market Theatre from South Africa, Tumkuka Dance from Zimbabwe. In addition Nanzikambe has won funding from the British Council and the Norwegian Embassy to implement the programme of work

Nanzikambe is looking for: 4 British performers and a writer with an interest in the region, the issues around the Zimbabwe crisis, and the relationship between Africa and the West, strong physical performance skills, and a devising background. The performance will blend dance, song, mask – drawing upon the mythical heritage in Zimbabwe – with clearly defined character-led text."

Project Brief - Zimbabwe in Motion Cross-cultural and artistic collaboration between companies in Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Britain to devise a performance and accompanying forum workshop that tours the Southern African region and Britain - engaging theatre-going audiences and key decision makers with crucial issues arising from the situation in Zimbabwe.

For a full project description contact the Africa Consortium - mollie@ukarts.com

To contact the company about potential performers/writers please email Melissa Eveleigh at melissa@nanzikambe.org

Eckhard Thiemann is looking for Dance companies to bring to the UK

I am sourcing potential dance touring productions for the UK for June 2009 and late 2009. For further information contact Eckhard@eckhardthiemann.com

Croydon Clocktower & Company of Angels Present; I Die, But The Memory Lives On

Creator: Company of Angels

An adaptation by Company of Angels writer and director John Retallack of Henning Mankell's book I DIE, BUT THE MEMORY LIVES ON about children in Uganda who are left to bring themselves up because both their parents die so young of Aids.

Ideas in Development

Collective Artistes Present; Tegonni: An African Antigone

Creator: Collective Artistes

Femi Osofisan's epic retelling of Sophocles' classic tale of subversion, insurgency and uprising comes to life with Chuck Mike's vibrant and invigorating theatrical style.

Available to tour 2008/09

More

24.2.08