Zimbabwe’s flagship arts talent search show, Dreamstar, is back for its eighth edition after a two-year hiatus.
The show, which is co-organised by the China-Zimbabwe Exchange Centre and JCMC, is supported by the Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe and will be going under the theme “Inspire to Aspire”.
Dreamstar founding trustee and chairperson of African Empire Group Steve Zhao said that the show is an initiative by local Chinese and Zimbabwe’s arts community to discover, nurture talent and push it to the world stage.
“We want to use our network to raise money for Zimbabwe’s upcoming artists,” he said. “We also want to send our young artists through the foundation to trainings and cultural exchanges.”
To broaden the talent search initiative, Dreamstar has allowed entrants to video record their performances using smartphones or suitable electronic gadgets and send the footage of their craft under a screening exercise that would lead into the roll-out of the traditional physical auditioning process.
The winner of the competition walks away with US$3,000 while the second and third placed winners get US$1,500 and US$500 respectively.
Seven other winning contestants set to complete the top 10 will all walk away with prizes, coupled with an opportunity to go to China and a surplus of work-related opportunities facilitated under JCMC.
“Many young people and many young artists should be able to aspire to evolve their own art and to also impact their communities,” said Jakaranda Culture and Media Corporation (JCMC) MD Napoleon Nyani.
The competition is open to all performing arts, poets, acrobats, and painters for as long as all that artistic expression can be performed on stage and exhibits originality and Zimbabwe’s cultural flair.
The deadline for submitting videos is July 25, 2023. Preliminary auditions will be held from July 31 to August 3, 2023, with semi-finals on August 4 and 5. The finals will be held on October 14, 2023.
