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Tsitsi Tasaranarwo and Tashinga Kawere
A Namibian arts delegation is in the country on a learning experience of processes involved in the National Arts and Merit Awards (NAMAs) ahead of the 21st Edition of the awards ceremony slated for tomorrow.
The Namibian Arts Council also plans to initiate a similar awards ceremony called the Namibia Arts, Culture and Heritage Awards.
The delegation visited the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation yesterday where it met officials from government and the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ).
Head of the visiting delegation, Ms Isobel Green Manuel, said they chose Zimbabwe’s National Arts Council because of its experience in hosting the NAMAs.
“We have put our team together to see which country we can benchmark,” she said. “We try to learn the best practices to set up an award as such. And we have decided on the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe based on the number of years they have run the awards, which speaks volumes and merits of the value attached to how they are doing their own awards.”
Ms Manuel said their existing awards were only focused on music and as such needed to be configured to cater for other categories in the arts sector
“We have Namibia music awards, but the awards are dedicated to the musical sector, so there is no overall award looking at all categories in the arts industry – literature and journalism, visual arts and performing arts, media, film,” she said.
“So, that is what we want to bring all together under one roof and award the outstanding greatest in the genres.”
NACZ executive director Nicholas Moyo applauded the commitment by the delegation and said they were utilising the opportunity to also learn from the Namibians.
“They have literally gone through all the processes that NAMA does,” he said. “They’ve looked at how the entries are done, the monitoring strategy that we use, the composition of adjudicators, the adjudication process itself, they even had time to look at what the event managers are doing.
“They’ve actually committed themselves to see every component that will make NAMA come out the way it will be on Saturday and for us it’s an amazing learning experience.”
The 21st edition of the NAMAs are running under the theme: “Unlocking Dreams”.
Online Reporter