In less than two weeks’ time, the annual Ubumuntu Arts Festival returns to Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi for its 5th staging.
The four-day festival is slated for July 12-15 at the memorial’s outdoor amphitheater, which has played host to the event since its inception in July 2015.
Ubumuntu is Kinyarwanda for "humanity”, or "being humane”.
Since that first staging, the festival has curved out a reputation as a platform for global artistry, civic dialogue, an open call for humanity, a bridge over nations, and Africa’s largest performance arts gathering centered on the theme of humanity.
If anything, Ubumuntu has also served to dispel the myth that art is nothing more than its entertainment value. The festival has further come to symbolize dialogue and peace building, healing from violence and bloodshed, and is a space for open public introspection, networking, and growth.
The festival slogan is; "I am because you are, you are because I am: together we are human”, and each year, it runs under a different theme.
This year’s theme is: "When Walls Come Down –Truth”. Last year, the festival run under the theme; Art and the Path to Resilience, while the 2017 festival theme was; "Art Meets Technology: Bringing Stories of Home to Life.”
Ubumuntu Arts Festival is the brainchild of Hope Azeda, the founder and Artistic Director of Mashirika Performing Arts and Media Company, the resident performance troupe at the festival.
In the run up to the first edition in July 2015, Azeda explained the rationale behind the festival:
"Not many people, even fewer in Africa, think of the arts as a means of effective communication or as an avenue for solving social problems. The truth is, art played a crucial role in tackling Rwanda’s immense post genocide challenges, from genocide perpetrators giving truthful testimonies, to victims forgiving perpetrators.”
A year earlier, in 2014, she had submitted the idea for the festival to the Africa Leadership Project (ALP) as her Leadership project proposal. Her proposal hinged heavily on the important role that the arts and theater played in Rwanda’s post-genocide recovery, with a view to helping solve similar challenges faced by other countries.
The festival is anchored on three core values: Humanity, creativity, and collaboration. On the festival stage, performances range from dance, movement, poetry, theater, to acrobatics, among others.
At the first edition in 2015, Azeda remarked:
"This festival will be an exercise in human introspection. It is a chance for Rwandans in particular, and the world at large to "re-question our humanity, to bridge the gap between being a human being, and being human, as the two are totally different.”
From strength to strength:
The inaugural Ubumuntu Arts Festival in 2015 drew participants from 11 countries, and about 5,000 festival goers from all walks of life.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of that first edition, organizers chose to push the number of festival nights from two to four. The two extra nights were dedicated to theater for the young, and women.
The following year, the festival drew performance troupes from 18 countries. More than 30 countries have been represented at the festival since its inception in 2015, with over 53 performances watched by a multicultural audience of more than 13,000 people.
Some of the countries that have been most actively represented at the festival over the years are; Rwanda, the US, DR Congo, South Africa, Nigeria, UK, Uganda, Lebanon, Czech Republic, Burundi, Iraq, and Sweden.
The festival takes place within a space that Azeda describes as a "physical representation of failed humanity” – the Kigali Genocide Memorial, "to create an environment of shared humanity”.
At the launch of the 2016 edition, Freddy Mutanguha, the Regional Director of AEGIS Trust explained the significance of the festival’s staging at the Kigali Genocide Memorial:
"The main reason this festival takes place at the Kigali Genocide Memorial is because this place is a symbol of lack of humanity, where more than 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are buried. When we are here we aren’t just remembering these innocent lost lives, but we are also here to receive a great lesson about what it means to be human, so that we don’t lose our humanity again, here, or elsewhere in the world.”
The AEGIS Trust is an organization that works to prevent genocide and mass atrocities across the world, and is one of the festival’s key partners. AEGIS runs the Kigali Genocide Memorial on behalf of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, CNLG.
Typically, the festival schedule incorporates a series of free workshops and panel discussions centered around the theme of humanity, and at which participants exchange ideas on how to become champions of humanity and voices of positive change in their respective communities. The performances, workshops, panel discussions and genocide memorial visits encourage participants to remember the past, celebrate the present, and work towards a more peaceful future.
An open global script:
At successive past editions of the festival, Azeda has described Ubumuntu as "an open global script”, one that employs the arts to help not only Rwandan, but global communities deal with their own tragedies, while also connecting with other communities:
The festival provides a platform for artists from all over the world to present performances that deal with difficult aspects of societal violence and human nature, from police brutality, mass incarceration, to civil war and genocide.
Both the timing and location of the festival hold deep historical and moral significance. The festival takes place at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, built on the resting place of 250,000 victims. It occurs in July, during the final week of the 100-day commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
In 2017, the festival brought on board Persons with Disabilities from the theater troupe, Talking Through Art, to perform a piece titled Inshuti (friends). Through song and dance, they proved that, indeed, disability is not inability.
This year, festival organizers are partnering with Huza Press, a local publishing house, and Spoken Word Rwanda, a monthly poetry forum, to introduce a dedicated literary element at the festival.
To that end, three literary side events will be staged across Kigali as part of the festival. The objective, organizers say, is to expand the festival to include literature, but also physically extend the festival’s reach across the city.
2018, a turning point:
2018 was a huge turning point for the festival and Mashirika, the organizers, as both received global recognition for championing the cause of humanity.
In July 2018, Mashirika was selected as the closing act at the annual Brave Festival in Poland, with two performances of Africa’s Hope, its flagship production.
Soon after, Mashirika scooped a MAAFA Lifetime Achievement Award at the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York.
At a personal level, Azeda scooped even more international awards for her efforts in spreading the message of humanity through the Ubumuntu Arts Festival.
First, she received two global regional awards (Great Lakes Region) in the Arts and Culture Sector from the CEO Global Women Titans in Kampala, Uganda in November 2018. A few days later, she was honored as a laureate of the John P McNulty Prize at a ceremony at the Metropolitan Club in New York. The award came with a $ 25,000 cash prize towards her artistic endeavors.
The McNulty Prize was bestowed upon "ordinary individuals who have effectively leveraged their expertise and entrepreneurialism to create meaningful change across the world”.
Azeda was further feted for her efforts in "amplifying the arts to move Rwanda and other countries from trauma to understanding”.
In the long run, organizers intend to use the festival to increase public appreciation of the Arts, while also creating a signature event for the country. Organizers further plan on documenting the processes that go into creating performances for the festival, with a view to developing a school Performing Arts curriculum that hopefully, would later be integrated into Rwanda’s Arts and Theater education system.
Such a large gathering of local and international arts practitioners and enthusiasts, organizers contend, will go a long way in further boosting the country’s image as a must-visit destination after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi – and what better way to showcase the country’s immense post-genocide gains, and future plans?
editor@newtimesrwanda.com