Dear Zimfest Family,
What do you think about building Zimfest 2021 together, as a series of local events hosted by local communities?
Here’s the basic idea: The Zimfest Organizing Committee (OC) would stitch together local events into an overall quilt covering a traditional Thursday through Sunday period (likely July 29 through Aug 1). Local events might include in-person and/or online components (classes, presentations, or performances). Anything goes: individual events as well as community chunks of time. Attendees could enjoy one of the local festivals in person and participate in the online components during the rest of the long weekend. If this sounds intriguing, read on to learn more!
Context: Evergreen State College will be unable to host Zimfest this year (see March 17th post). Following President Biden’s prediction that COVID-19 vaccinations are going well enough to allow small gatherings by July 4th, we are hopeful that small events will be possible by the end of July. We emphasize that any in-person gatherings should follow CDC and local guidelines for masking, restrictions on venue capacity, etc.
Next steps: We want you and your community to think about how you might contribute to a Zimfest 2021 quilt. The scale of each local event could be anything from a single performance streamed online to a full half-day of classes, presentations, and performances, i.e. a mini-Zimfest. Each participating community would manage their own local events, while the Zimfest OC focuses on stitching them into the overall festival. The OC and Zimfest Board want to do all we can to help Zimbabwean artists participate in and benefit from Zimfest. We urge each local community to look for ways to involve these artists in person or remotely.
Have questions? More info will be forthcoming, but we did not want to wait any longer to share our ideas with you. For online components, we can share what we learned from the 2020 online sessions. Some financial questions such as cost for attendees, payment schedule for teachers, and potential sharing of venue costs between Zimfest and each local community are still under discussion. Feel free to reach out to the OC by sending email to oc{at}zimfest{dot}org. We plan to have an online application ready to accept proposals by the first week of June.
Together we can stitch a Zimfest 2021 quilt that will renew ties across the Zimfest community and provide memories to sustain us until we can hug, dance, and make music as one big family again.
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” Vivian Greene
Yours, Zimfest 2021 OC
Please iz there going to be msrket place community integrated with this. I will like to participate. Thanks
Yes, we are hoping to set up a totally Virtual Online Marketplace and are searching for someone to coordinate it as the 2020 volunteer coordinator cannot do it this year.