artsXchange

This week I am posting a blog about arts and cultural communications. My work in artsXchange has led me all over the globe producing cultural events with the aim of connecting cultures and finding a common ground where we come together to debate, discuss, learn, and exchange from one another.

Over the years I have produced an arts and film festival on the island of Zanzibar called, ZIFF, the Festival of the Dhow Countries. www.ziff.or.tz This wonderful and unique festival was something I tripped over in 1998 when I was visiting the island as a tourist, and had a short conversation with a founding member of the festival which changed my life.

I began working with the festival that year to build on its capacity for technical event production, and 8 years later, I found myself as the producer and technical advisor for the largest arts and cultural event in east Africa. For many years I traveled there on my own dime, making a festival out of whatever we could find on the island for equipment. It was a challenge pulling this off in an environment where you could not buy a CD player anywhere in the country.

After the first year, I set up a training and education program in stage arts, one of the first in east Africa. Together with a number of local friends, we managed to learn and train together in event production and found ourselves managing to build on the process by purchasing new equipment in 2004 and shipping it to Zanzibar for the festival to start its own self sustainability program.

Now, ZIFF has taken on a life of its own through this technical arts communication process and I am proud to say that artsXchange has had a large part in this program. In 2004-2005 AXC brought over five professionals to facilitate the training process in lighting, sound, video, film composition and performance arts/dance. The integration of the training and work process for the festival became a wonderful opportunity for everyone involved to participate in a global cultural exchange of ideas, mechanisms and a whole lot of fun.

ArtsXchange now is expanding its global role by setting up a company in the US which will work with festivals, cultural heritage tourism initiatives, and arts communications not only in east Africa, but around the world. Specifically, we are supporting a film festival in Haiti, called the Jakmel film festival. www.jakmelfilm.ht This incredible film festival was started two years ago and has flourished despite the difficult situation politically in Haiti in the last two years.

At the moment Jakmel is working with artsXchange to establish new models of arts communications and find ways to reach audiences with film, cutting across boundaries and tearing down walls through the arts.