Welcome to the Chimanimani Arts Festival 2009 webpage – we are pleased to announce this years festival will run from May 23-24.

After the success of the festival revival in 2008 we have been faced with a real challenge to put forward a program to match that of last year – we are pleased with the result.

We have continued with our emphasis on bringing Zimbabwe’s best known talents to  the Chimanimani stage with shows from Dudu  Manhenga, Dino Mudondo and Steve Makoni – and we have looked to represent a wide range of musicals genres and other arts and craft disciplines within the scope of the festival . We also continue to use the festival as a developmental platform for Zimbabwean artists and, besides the Chimanimani and Manicaland groups , there will also be shows from talent developers Music Crossroads, whilst Student Partnership Worldwide (SPW) will showcase their AIDS  related dance shows and workshops as part of their “Dance 4 Life” student training program.

This year we are also  grateful to the Embassy of Spain for their support to bring our first international  group “Demachena” (Shona for ‘black and white‘) – a Spanish based mbira, guitar and percussion trio comprising  of Rugare Musikavanhu, Luis Giminez and Antonio Prats- they will perform on Saturday 23 May. We hope this exciting development is the cornerstone of making the festival an international event  attracting groups and artists from our region and further afield.

The festival remains a free entry event – for that we remain grateful to those donors and sponsors who help to make the festival happen – without whom the logistics of organizing the festival would not be possible – thank you very much.

The past year has had its challenges for all Zimbabweans, and now 2009 seems to have ushered in a rash of new challenges on a global scale but a glimmer of hope at home -  we are looking to the festival to bring some  respite and entertainment to the Chimanimani community and to all those visitors who take the chance to come to this “festival with soul”

Steve Sparx
Festival Director

Contact Steve Sparx for more festival information – sparx@thulani.net