Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
IN 2022, Intwasa lost the spring in its step.
For the first since it was founded in 2004, the 18th edition of the festival which was scheduled to take place from September 26 to October 1, 2022 under the theme: Re-Connect, saw the arts fete shift seasons after it was postponed to between 29 and 31 December.
This was a significant change. By its very definition, Intwasa is a spring festival and in Bulawayo, it is the one arts extravaganza that has always welcomed the season with an explosion of colour and energy on the city’s streets.
In December however, long after the last flowers of spring had bloomed, the festival lost some of its flavour, as it became just another footnote in a period filled with many entertainment highlights.
Artistes performing at Intwasa (file photo)
Intwasa, an annual platform that celebrates the diversity of human cultures and creation in music, film, spoken word, theatre, dance, literary arts, fashion and crafts, was always going to find the going tough during a season when people’s time is divided between partying and spending time with family.
It is for this reason that the festival this year is looking to regain the spring in its step, announcing last week that it will run from 26 to 30 September this year. The theme for this year’s fest, “Imagine it and Experience it”, is also set to run for the next few editions of the arts extravaganza, as it looks to build some momentum after a tumultuous few years that were triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Our dates are out and I think we have a theme that we want to run for maybe three years. This is because while we are trying to get back to normal, we also want to change a few things here and there. This is because we want to become more interactive and we want to see more engagements here and there. We want to see our programming change into something more meaningful and vibrant for our local audiences,” said festival director Raisedon Baya.
Intwasa festival file picture
Baya said last year’s challenges had also taught the organisers the value of collaboration, as they learnt that they could not always go it alone when hosting such a big showpiece event. As it bids to entice the crowds that it used to attract, Baya said Intwasa would also endeavour to improve the quality of its programming.
“We are also hoping that as we push towards normality we are also engaging as many partners as possible when trying to curate an event like ours. We came to the realisation that you cannot run a platform like ours without collaboration and so that’s our focus for this year’s festival. We want to curate a programme that’s about collaboration more than anything else.
“As we engage further with stakeholders, I have always said that a festival is about its audiences. For us to bring back the audiences that we used to have, we need serious programming and serious engagement. Our theme is “Imagine it and Experience”, it and we chose this because we are now saying Intwasa is not just a festival but an experience. We have realised that people are not just coming to events for the sake of events, but people are coming there for experiences,” he said.
Baya said Intwasa wanted to present new and groundbreaking programming at this year’s fest.
“So, our appeal or promise is that we will try to give our audiences this experience that they want. In terms of our programming, we will try to align our events in a way that they give our audiences this experience that they want and that speaks to the quality that we want to put out.
“We are also saying that we want to see new material. During Covid-19, we were using the excuse that people were not creating and thus could not come up with new material but this is no longer the case.
“Spaces are no longer closed, people have been creating and if we are really interested in giving people new experiences, it can only be from new productions,” he said.