House On Fire in Eswatini is excited to announce it has secured a substantial grant from the EU-supported Sound Connects Fund to support an innovative new and ground-breaking project that will support continental musical collaborations – CollaboNation!
CollaboNation will connect and unite the Southern African region through a series of unique music collaborations, supporting the weaving together of Africa’s rich and diverse musical genres and inspiring a game-changing creative narrative, contributing to the development of new audiences, inspiring social cohesion, and building linkages between cultural industries and networks.
Artists from Eswatini, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana are invited to apply for the opportunity to collaborate with each other to record original and inspirational songs, in line with the social and environmental values of House On Fire and the MTN Bushfire festival.
The call out for CollaboNation 2023 opens on 8th December 2022 and closes on 23rd January 2023.
Collabonation will be a content and artist-driven journey, showcasing the creative and collaborative process of the artists before and during the song’s studio recording. The journey culminates in a live performance by the artists on the internationally celebrated stages at MTN Bushfire 2023, resulting in a complete, professional, music video. Distribution will be handled in partnership with the world-wide distributor Paradise Africa.
The aim is to extend the reach of Southern African artists, exposing them to new audiences, media, promoters and other industry professionals, in order to access new markets and communities while developing artist brands.
CollaboNation will facilitate a range of up-skilling and training opportunities for Eswatini music industry professionals involved in the project, such as record producers, sound engineers, photographers, videographers, fashion designers, graphic designers and other creative professionals, with a focus on youth-led and women-led creative services businesses, as part of House On Fire’s local arts development goals.
Artist applications for the first CollaboNation edition and links to Application forms, as well as further information on the Artist Application process for the first CollaboNation edition, are now available on the CollaboNation Page: www.bush-fire.com/collabonation.
Further updates will be posted on House on Fire social media.
CollaboNation is funded by the Sound Connects Fund, an initiative by the Music In Africa Foundation (MIAF) and Goethe-Institut. The Sound Connects Fund is made possible with funding from the ACP-EU Culture Programme, a project implemented by the Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and funded by the European Union (EU). The Fund is also co-funded by Goethe-Institut and Siemens Stiftung.
