The partnership between Blantyre Arts Festival (Baf) and Blantyre City Council (BCC) has led to the creation of the one-day festival known as Blantyre City Arts and Cultural Festival to be held at Kamuzu Stadium on October 7 2023.
The development now means Baf will now be operating under the banner of Blantyre City Arts and Cultural Festival.
This was announced Thursday at Civic Centre during a press conference where officials from the two parties highlighted that the venture aims at promoting existence between people of different ethnic backgrounds who are residing in the commercial city.
BCC Chief Executive Officer Dennis Chinsewu said, due to rapid urbanisation, most people from different cultures have migrated to cities such as Blantyre, hence the need to co-exist.
“We believe that people who are living in Blantyre have been deprived of their connections to traditional backgrounds and we feel it is high time we brought culture closer to them. We have had arts festivals before but we think they had no aspect of culture and, so, we would like to bring them together,” Chinsewu said.
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He said activities on the day will start with a street carnival from Civic Centre to Kamuzu Upper Stadium, where festival goers will be treated to a combo of activities such as poetry, music, theatre and traditional dances.
“What we want is for people to know that we can have, for instance, nsima prepared from traditional pots. We want people to test local foods like kalongonda, therere lokupa and the like. We would like to have residents understand that their parents have a culture which they should know and remember. They also need to know and appreciate other cultures,” he said.
Baf Executive Director Thom Chibambo said the partnership will be sustained and that, having worked alone in the past years, they were happy to have BCC as a partner.
“The idea is that arts and culture activities in Blantyre should grow much bigger than before. This event will be held annually as usual and we aim at making it bigger than ever,” Chibambo said.
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Having held Baf activities at Njamba Freedom Park last year, Chibambo said they decided to move to Kamuzu Upper Stadium.
“This is a venue where people can easily reach compared to Njamba. We will make sure that we do things perfectly and security will be tight. We want people to come in large numbers and experience so much more. It is a one day festival but people will go back home satisfied because we will have activities starting in the morning through to the evening,” he said.
The festival will this year be held under the theme ‘Celebrating Arts, Culture and Unity to Promote Participatory Municipal Management’.
