We apply for funding opportunity

We organized a meeting one Wednesday at Moholo LiveHouse, just before the deadline. The meeting was intended as an invitation to add-on artists into the initial idea of Mama Watch (photo-street art project). The push was a funding opportunity from UCT centre for African cities. Public Art and the Power of Place, with support from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, published an open call to support six public art engagements that explore the significance of place outside of the City Bowl in Cape Town’s townships in 2015.

The gathering turned out to be (as always in Harare) unexpected inspiration. more than 12 artists from various disciplines, ages and backgrounds set and talked for hours about their ideas of safety, public art and the role of creativity in the township. Themba shared a vision of pop-up cinema of his short documentaries; Palesa suggested to facilitate a workshop on playing with words in collaboration with the library and Zimasa is passionate about a community theatre intervention. The conversation grew as people put their dreams in a pile. So much creativity in various directions, all in one gathering.

An after chat on the taxi back home had a consensus - the event was a relational artwork by itself with people networking, inspiring and serving as a support group for creative dreamers. How can one proposal include all those dreams? Does the original Mama Watch umbrella still fit? Can we meet again before rushing into the proposal?

There was a strong taste for more. And It inspired us to twist the proposal so it will allow us to meet again, and again, and turn this gathering into a public art intervention. And turn Moholo LiveHouse into a public institution. We can call it The Harare Academy of Inspiration or something; and host different workshops and performance lectures for the community every day. a dream community centre for a month. Under that umbrella all our wishes - from the pop-up cinema, to the photo exhibition - can come true. And we will have fun during.

Mama Watch team have applied to this opportunity as a part of a group proposal The Harare Academy of Inspiration / The project re-imagines schools and community centres, providing adults and youth the opportunity to sitin a dream classroom. We will use multi disciplinary art to express fresh notions and creative narrativesaround the practice of knowledge traffic in the society. The proposal is based on the idea of extending ourdefinitions of public art – not only the art which takes place in a street or public transport; but rather artwhich inserts itself into public systems of content – such as the education system.

Keeping our fingers crossed :)