Donor funding for the arts, a double-edged sword

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I am not a huge fan of donor funding; at the very least it rocks the boat. It is easy to believe that a person without eggs and bacon for breakfast is enduring great hardships and should be rescued: The solution for most donors would be to donate the bacon and eggs to that person without eggs and bacon without creating a facility whereby the person will be able to find his own bacon and eggs in the future and in the absence of the donor.

                Donor funding is not premised on the very clichéd ‘teach a man how to fish’ adage and because of that it has wrecked havoc in Zimbabwe and many other African countries – my hatred of donor funding does not mean I wouldn’t take if it came my way though – who would not want easy money? My argument does not apply to donor funding in general but as it applies to the arts ‘industry’. I have been in the arts for about five years and I have watched with a despairing heart as donor funds destroy what could have been a major earner for the Zimbabwean economy. Donor funds have ravaged the cornerstone of any vibrant arts industry; a big and appreciative audience base. A paying audience that is. Now there is silly talk from artists about people not ‘supporting’ the arts. The ordinary man on the street does not have to support an artistic product just as much as he is not supporting a bakery by buying a loaf of bread; it is something he needs: It is the duty of the artist to create high quality and entertaining artistic products that people would willingly pay for.

                The donor community has been throwing loads of money at ‘productions’ that are big on issues – good governance, domestic violence, sexual rights and so on and rather tiny on creativity. The productions are becoming more and more mediocre, more and more ridiculous and the audiences have stayed at home and coaxing them back will be difficult. This is particularly so for theatre. The situation has been worsened by the fact that our ‘government’ is paranoid and constantly bans productions and we as artists have all stupidly jumped into protest art jungle because there is money to be made from insulting Mugabe.

                A new breed of artist has emerged that can write beautiful proposals and awful theatre and television scripts. I watched a television programme on Dead BC the other day that was dealing with the issue of male circumcision: It was disheartening to see the kind of rubbish a bunch of ‘experienced’ artists had come up with. I guess the term experience is relative; if you repeat the same mistake for ten years, are you ten years experienced?

                I remember when the movie Neria was produced. I was a young boy then and the conclusions I made about it I made later. The movie dealt with issues of inheritance. Everything was paid for by donor money and the producers did not feel the need to make the movie a box office success and make a profit. It was an excellent movie that could have filled up cinemas with a paying audience and it could have set a business precedent in the movie making ‘industry’. The same is happening in theatre; everything is paid for and the producers do not care whether a play is watched by two people or twenty people.

                The paranoid nature of our ‘government does not help matters either: At the moment there is a play on national healing on a national tour. I saw a newspaper report saying it would be in Bulawayo, where I stay, last week: I did not see it or hear about it and I haven’t met anyone who has seen it or heard about it. I did not understand why until I heard the police had denied them clearance until it was too late to launch a meaningful publicity campaign. How can we make a decent dollar from gate takings and try to convince the corporate world to jump on board using the best bargaining chip available to artists – a big and appreciative audience if things are like this. Should we be happy that our plays have paltry audiences of two or three people just because everything is paid for?  Perhaps a welcome exception in the past decade is Christopher Mlalazi’s Election Day, directed by Eunice Tava: The play gave the audience value for money.

                Perhaps theatre, film and television practitioners should learn from musicians, who know that only excellence will put the food on table. They strive to polish their acts and present good products to the audience and those who take the audience for granted will fall by wayside.