By Chitownews reporter- Admire Mjamaru.
Chitungwiza Community Development Network (CCDN), today convened an exciting one day training workshop for forty emerging artistes from Chitungwiza at Leisure Centre resort on promoting youth participation in governance and electoral processes.
The forty participants were drawn from all locations in Chitungwiza representing an eclectic mixture of the dominant Zimdancehall music genre, Hip-hop, Poetry and drama. The performing artistes were complemented by producers such as Deeman records and Kritical of Beatz clappin studios and songwriters.
The workshop’s objective was to promote active citizenship through arts and culture in Chitungwiza and Zimbabwe in general.
“This project falls under the human rights, governance and democracy project which seek to promotive active youth participation in governance and electoral processes in determining their destiny”, said CCDN Coordinator, Mr Eddington Shayanowako.
The workshop raised artistes’ awareness of fundamental human rights and freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe 2013 and how artist can utilize them in educating and entertaining young people who constitute the major demographic group.
After the eye opening discussion on rights and freedoms which used copies of the Constitution of Zimbabwe 2013 as reference material, the workshop explored how CCDN will collaborate with artistes and other players in the arts industry in producing content on peaceful youth participation elections.
Participants also learnt about the history and role of music in influencing current and past political developments in Zimbabwe.
The artistes energetically composed five songs and a drama skit which were all performed at the end of the workshop. The results were astounding and showed the depth and scale of artistic talent in Chitungwiza which CCDN can harness to promote the youth voice, active citizenship and human rights discourse in Chitungwiza and Zimbabwe ahead of epoch-defining elections in 2018.
