Held back by low funding and the impact of COVID-19 on their work, Zimbabwean creatives can now dip into a special three-year €2 million funding facility from the European Union Delegation in Zimbabwe, to be delivered via the Culture Fund.
Under the programme, called CreativeACTIONs 2, Culture Fund will invite submissions from Zimbabwean artistes for grants to support their work.
Culture Fund chair Nellie Tiyago-Jinjika said: “Culture Fund is grateful to long-standing development partners – the European Union Delegation to Zimbabwe; for investing over €2 million into the creative sector over three years.”
CreativeACTIONs 2, which runs from 2023–2025, is a continuation of CreativeACTIONs 1 (2020–2021).
Added Tiyago-Jinjika: “We value all players within the ecosystem – without whom the Culture Fund serves little purpose. We align our programmes to national development priorities.”
The Culture Fund project will provide financial and technical support to artists and creatives in all Zimbabwe’s ten provinces. Grant applications from the ecosystem will respond to public calls for proposals.
According to Culture Fund, CreativeACTIONs2 aims to strengthen individual creative civil society organisations’ capacities in areas such as digital skills, production, marketing, networking and arts education. It will support innovative artistic and cultural creations from artists and cultural practitioners, creative civil society organisations and private operators in the cultural and creative industries.
The EU Delegation to Zimbabwe has funded arts and culture projects in Zimbabwe through the Culture Fund since 2012 under projects such as Culture Impacts and CreativeACTIONs 1. The latter benefitted from a €500,000 EU grant. Under this project, Culture Fund sub-granted 21 projects across Zimbabwe.
The grants will be awarded under two lots; Lot 1 (larger grants) will have a minimum of USD11,000.00 and a maximum amount of USD60,000.00, while Lot 2 (smaller grants) will give a minimum of USD1,000.00 and a maximum amount of USD10,000.00.
