The South African Arts and Development Association [SAADA] was launched on the 11th of March 2015 at Museum Africa in Newton. SAADA is a non profit organisation that will identify and nurture up and coming South African artists in their various creative fields.
The key objectives are to provide training to ensure sustainability of careers in the arts, improvement in productivity, and effectiveness of artists in the industry.
The programme is funded by various corporate and government departments and partners include SABC and chosen municipalities around the country.
They received funding of R 9.3 million from the National Lotteries Board that will enable SAADA not to only stage a competition, but also to host workshops for upcoming artists to improve & uplift the standard of musicians in the music industry; covering topics from refining talent, securing and managing recording deals, contracts, media interviews and marketing their music.
This project will be spearheaded by Arthur Mafokate of 999 Records. It is unclear if this is an initiative by Arthur himself, or if he was approached, either way the funding is up on the table and we will be monitoring its progress, especially to see how inclusive or exclusive it will be. There is no time span allocated to this project except that it will be a 12 month program for the selected 1000.
How this will work is that a 1000 artists will be randomly selected from all provinces, 100 from each province. [yes, a 100 from each province]. According to Arthur’s insta post, this is what will happen, in his own words.
…i am about to travel the whole country in discovering 1000 potential young people (100 per province and 100 that will be randomly picked) and workshop them about “HOW TO SURVIVE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY”
Scanning through their website, it states that it is open to all genres, and Arthur himself confirmed this at the launch when approached by MzansiReggae. We are waiting to see if Reggae will be included this time as we would also like to enjoy the benefits of the so called Rainbow Nation.
To find out where Arthur will be and when, you will need to follow them on their Social Network sites and regularly check their website [www.saada.org.za] for updates, as no dates were specified at the time of going to print.
Check out the promotional video below and see how ‘inclusive’ this is going to be.