By Dumisani Ndlovu
Veteran author and educationist, Professor William Chigidi recently urged artists to be original and acquire proper creative writing and competences skills in order to be sustainable.
He made the sentiments at the recent Creative Writing workshop held at Gweru Memorial Library. The seminar dubbed “The Power of Continuously improving your Writing Skills” was organized by poet Mbizo Chirasha.
During his presentation, Prof. Chigidi hailed the youth for attending the one-day workshop citing that they are the future, the goal of the Creative Writing Symposia was to grow, develop, nurture, cultivate and develop writing talents in Gweru.
“Many people have been complaining about the low quality of Shona Ndebele and sometimes English books that we write and put at the disposal of our industry. Gatherings such as this one is hardly the way to achieve a sustainable readership in Africa and sustainable readership in Zimbabwe,” he said adding that by improving the quality of creative works, artists will equally improve the quality and quantity of readership.
At the workshop, Prof. Chigidi, a lecturer with broader spectrum of writing, literature and creative writing knowledge imparted knowledge to over 30 literary artists. The seminar was organized to bring writers together, cultivate their skills, and motivate each other and to keep the Midlands literary arts and writing network connected.
While industry has had many challenges, mainly emanating from its informal ways of operations where most of the sector players do arts as hobbies but not business.
Commenting about the workshop Ministry of Sports, Arts and Recreation provincial arts officer, Reward Shockson hailed the initiative saying such initiatives will contribute to the recognition of the sector as a profession worth pursuing and positively changing people’s mindset towards the sector.
He emphasized the need for cooperation between government and the sector to influence policy formulation so that the arts industry can function guided by such policies.
“Education, capacity building and training of artists forms the backbone of the development of the sector and country at large. This project and its partners come in at the right time,” he said.
