Culture Week expanded

Showbiz Reporter
Culture Week commemorations have been expanded into a reconstituted National Culture Month in a move that will see the event running from May 1 to 31.

Event organisers, the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) said the transition to Culture Month was premised on the impact witnessed in the successful hosting of the festival over the years with communities and the Government fully appreciating the role that culture plays in development.

“After extensive consultations with stakeholders, the NACZ is pleased to announce the birth of Culture Month which will run under the theme, ‘Celebrating cultural diversity leaving no one behind’.

Photo Credit: Mapanzure

Following two years of mostly virtual commemorations due to the Covid-19 restrictions, NACZ is happy that the first edition of Culture Month will provide an opportunity for practitioners and consumers of Zimbabwean Culture and Creative Industries products to interact in their different spaces to celebrate cultural diversity.”

Culture Month will aim to bring social cohesion and integration through the arts and culture, showcasing diverse cultural practices through various forms that will include dance, food, attire, visual arts, literary arts, film and television, music and poetry.

It will also seek to bring together, diverse cultural activities and practices for increased public consumption.

“The Culture Month activities will also afford the nation an opportunity to achieve national consensus in diversity, through commemorating yesteryear cultural practices as well as contemporary (popular) culture that inform the Zimbabwean identity.

“It will also provide a platform to showcase the Zimbabwean cultural identity in a globalised environment for sustainable socio-economic development and posterity,” NACZ executive director Nicholas Moyo said in a statement.

The inaugural Culture Month commemorations will be spread across the country’s 10 provinces with each province expected to develop its own commemorative events that will be coordinated by the NACZ provincial offices.

“NACZ has already begun engagement of different communities at ward, village and district level to develop a calendar of events for all culture month activities.”

The national launch of the event will be held on May 21, the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development in Mutoko, Mashonaland East Province.

Culture Month will be celebrated in line with the UNESCO 2001 Declaration of the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development which is designed to promote, commemorate and celebrate the world’s diverse cultures.

All nations the world over are expected and encouraged to celebrate the uniqueness of diverse cultures found in them as major components of the World Culture.