Meet the #connecthubs Harare Cohort!

This November, we are inviting young leaders, influencers and decision-makers from social and creative hubs to attend the connect.hubs training program in Cape Town and Harare, designed to build and sustain their skills, knowledge and network.

For the Harare cohort, we’re incredibly excited about these outstanding Creative and Social Economy hubs representing a cross-section of creativity and social impact across the Southern Africa region. They come from Malawi, Zambia and across Zimbabwe.

connect.hubs is an initiative to support the social and creative hubs in Southern Africa that drive the creative economies and create social impact in the region. Creative and social hubs support diverse communities of artists, entrepreneurs, activists and culture producers in physical or virtual spaces. Examples are makerspaces, music studios, fablabs, collectives, online networks, co-working spaces, incubators, and more.

#connecthubs is a project by British Council #SouthernAfricaArts British Council Zimbabwe and Hivos Southern Africa with training led by NESTA, and support from Electric South , Enthuse Afrika and Young Blood Africa.

🔥 Congratulations to the 22 selected hubs for the Harare cohort. The featured hubs and their managers are:

1Five – a creative hub that helps creatives connect more with other creatives and non-creatives through networking events. In addition, the hub has provided space for a community of guitarists to meet, and working space for a fashion designer and music producer, just to mention a few.

Afro Tokyo Creative Network –is a that brings together and facilitates Artists and their Creative Content in a bid to promote concepts, films, series, comics, video game and other forms of new media, for international and local investment and consumption.

Afrobloggers – is a meeting place for Africa’s creatives from all over Africa and because the internet transcends boarders we are able to showcase the world to meet Africa. Born out of the need for a blogger to find an audience; Afrobloggers seeks to promote blogging and a platform where digital content creators can find a place to connect, share their work and even learn from each other.

B2C CoWorking – an incubator and coworking space in Harare’s vibrant CBD that offers a convening place for millennials, entrepreneurs and innovators who are seeking to solve Zimbabwe’s societal problems using local innovative solutions.

Bulongo Incubator for Fashion and Creative Arts – is an organisation intended to drive change in the market environment for artists in Zambia and Southern Africa by providing special tailored business tools, shared work space and shared machinery to creative small and medium creative entrepreneurs.

BustopTv – produces weekly newscasts that utilize satire and humour to address contemporary issues as part of the Consortium’s advocacy strategy. BustopTv’s platforms have allowed organizations to create interactive marketing campaigns advocacy campaigns, advertise and for their messages go viral cutting geographical boundaries, while simultaneously reaching a great number potential clients.

Choma Provincial Library Digital Hub – aims to be a community centre that serves a diverse interest for different groups and runs programmes that are target oriented at each time. Their work includes basic ICT training for different community groups.

Community Solutions Act (CSA)– is a Masvingo indigenous youth led creative organization which fuses its convening power to create edutainment, access and opportunities for young people through providing, facilitating youth centric exhibitions, trainings and meet-ups which benefit our young people in Masvingo.

Cottage #47 – is a music studio that provides a space in which producers and beat makers create audio experiences and further offers artists the opportunity to have their songs professionally recorded, mixed and mastered.

Creative Menace – is an ecosystem of artists that thrives on collaboration with a mission to create a safe space for creatives to grow in their art while simultaneously contributing to efforts that eliminate problems plaguing the youth of Malawi.

Early Entertainment – is a multimedia production studio which fosters strategic collaboration between different creative fields in Bulawayo with a special focus on theatre, film and music for entertainment with a purpose.

Girls Inspire Loud Camps Malawi – a Musical Hub that uses music as a tool to reach out to girls aged 10 -21 by creating a comfortable and free environment for young girls to come and play with instruments of their choices.

Mabvazuva Creative Hub – is a physical and virtual place that brings enterprising people – working in the creative and cultural industries – together. The hub provides access to the rehearsal room, the cyber space, the recording studio and cultural venue for gigs.

Mind Foundation – is a community based organization that provides a platform for children to learn ICT and develop content for radio and TV and also develop educational mobile based apps.

MMBX Krea8ive Community – is a co-working space which exists to empower young and emerging artists with skills development as well as opportunities in digital media, film and television production, audio production, illustration and graphics, and animation.

Page Poetry Alive (PPA) – is a platform for nurturing expressive art forms. The biggest intent being to revive the reading culture whilst collaborating to grow PPA into a global movement.

Shinga Innovation Hub – is an entrepreneurship learning center, that capacitates, develops and supports small to medium enterprises (SME’s) for sustainable growth.

Simuka Comedy – a comedy collective or club that unearth, nurture, groom and promote comedy talent in Zimbabwe with an aim to make stand-up comedy the prime entertainment of choice as well as to educate the community of the existence of stand-up comedy in Zimbabwe.

Umahlekisa Comedy Club – is a humour service provider that specialises in curating comedy events as well as grooming comedians and spoken word artists. They provide support systems for these artists in addition to creating spaces for the genre.

Umotto Centre of Culture – is a youth-led artistic expression organization that promotes social acceptance and human rights for young people and especially supports young people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender with a non-bias, non-discriminatory approach

Yoweli Chungu Filimu – is a creative studio with a main objective to build professional level skills in the entire spectrum of the creative arts and film production.

Zaluso Arts – is an art collective and hub that aims to promote art in Malawi by creating a community where artists can meet to learn, inspire and grow together. As a hub, Zaluso Arts opens its doors to upcoming artists to access its studios.

We are happy to announce that this training program is only the start of the exciting connect.hubs project! There will be upcoming opportunities for creative or social impact hubs across southern Africa to engage with other hubs, access resources and even compete for project funding.

Please follow the #connecthubs #GoConnectComeCreate hashtags and the connect.hubs social media pages: Medium, Facebook & Twitter to stay updated on future opportunities.