The British Council Zimbabwe, in
collaboration with I-Way Africa, Jump Start Zimbabwe, and Alliance Francaise have
come up with Culture Shift, a program of events seeking to come up with ‘solutions’
for Zimbabwe’s creative sector.
The events, which kick
off at Alliance Francaise, with two days of idea generation from the 21st to
the 22nd of February 2013, will bring together talented
techies, passionate about art, culture and creativity as well as talented artists
and cultural professionals or organizations who are interested in digital
technology and what it can do for the growth of the sector.
The Ideation would be
followed by the Culture Shift Hack from March 5 to 7, 2013 with those whose
ideas the judges saw to be worthy of investment being invited and standing a
chance to secure a contract worth $3,500 to develop the prototype further.
Kudzayi
Ngwerume, British Council’s Arts Manager said this was the first technology challenge in Zimbabwe to focus entirely on finding solutions for the Creative Economy.
She went on to point out that the relationship between arts and technology in Zimbabwe has
largely been unexplored.
“There is
a synergy between innovation and creativity. If you look at companies like
Apple, Samsung etc- you have a combination of your programmer/developer and
your creative person. Hopefully by running this program we can start to
initiate the possibility of this kind of collaboration.”
Also
expected to be in attendance are the key stakeholders from the Ministries of
SMEs and Education, Sports, Arts and Culture and the private sector to help
shed light on topics such as: Start-up financing options, the creative economy
in Zimbabwe, IT now and the near future and fundable ideas.
