Culture Fund and Sweden Award grants worth US$420,000.00 as investment to Zimbabwean Arts, Culture and Heritage

Culture Fund and Sweden Award grants worth US$420,000.00 as investment to Zimbabwean Arts, Culture and Heritage

The Culture Fund is an organisation that seeks to provide financial and technical support to cultural practitioners, institutions and activities with the ultimate aim of contributing to the development of the culture sector in Zimbabwe. The Culture Fund Board recently met and allocated grant funding to projects for the 1st cycle 2013 covering different arts and culture sector sub - sectors and feeding into the Culture Fund Programme key result areas. Grants worth US$421,006.75 were awarded to more than 50 projects and programmes.

In 2013, the Culture Fund Board is supporting the Zimbabwean arts and culture sector through two broad mechanisms; Board strategic intervention to sector needs and a grants programme open to all sector actors with project proposal assessments done by a Technical Advisory Committee of Experts (TACE). Resolutions for funding for both mechanisms are done by the Culture Fund board.

Grants were allocated to cultural institutions, cultural organisations, associations, groups, schools as well as to individual artists. The music recording programme supporting music recording by upcoming musical groups was also allocated funding.  Approved programmes and projects were addressing one or more of the Culture Fund's 10 key result areas as follows:
 
1.    Arts Education, Training, Development
2.    Gender √¢‚Ǩ‚Äú Women & Youths Empowerment
3.    Community Empowerment
4.    Talent Search, Development & Showcasing
5.    National Pride, Identity & Heritage
6.    Human Rights,  Artists Rights Promotion
7.    Leadership & Management Skills Development
8.    National Strategy For The Arts & Culture
9.    Production & Access To Markets
10.   Information Access & Knowledge Management

The criterion used by the Board in assessment of applications includes implementation partner capacity to coordinate and implement; creativity and innovation of new concepts; good value for money and visible impact; tangible and intangible outputs and outcomes;  as well as project sustainability beyond current funding. Previously supported projects should have been successful with all reports submitted and grant fully accounted for.
During this cycle a total of 220 applications requesting more than US$4 million dollars were submitted to the Culture Fund. The amount being requested by the sector is way beyond the funding capacity of the Culture Fund. Out of the grant applications submitted 20 projects were successful as per second list below. Some of the reasons for rejection by both the TACE and the Board included:

√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Applications with insufficient information
√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Lack of consistency between objectives, activities and budgets
√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Unrealistic budgets
√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Repeat applications lacking innovation
√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Expired dates of implementation of project
√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    Project proposal submitted outside mandate of the Culture Fund

The Culture Fund Board has scheduled the next round of assessment of applications submitted to the Culture Fund towards the end of the 3rd Quarter of 2013 and has been generally awarding grants of around US$3,000.00 to a maximum of US$20,000.00.

Submissions for funding applications are welcome throughout the year.

Support to the approved projects as per lists below was made possible with a grant from the Swedish International Development  Cooperation Agency (Sida). Sida has been injecting an average of US$1 million annually since 2007 to the development of the arts and culture in Zimbabwe through the grants programme managed by the Culture Fund.  In 2012 Sida allocated an additional grant of US$ 1 million for the resuscitation of the Harare City Library.


√¢‚Ǩ¬¢    The following is a list of 2013 Board Strategic Intervention Project