Female Literary Arts and Music Enterprise
The FLAME (Female Literary, Arts & Music Enterprise) project was launched in October 2006 as an arts development program designed to practically promote women artists into the mainstream of the arts in Zimbabwe, by providing performance opportunities, exposure, skills workshops, networking possibilities and publicity. In 2007 FLAME established ‘Sistaz Open Mic’, a monthly event held on a Saturday afternoon, created to encourage young women to come out in the safety of daytime, and participate in the arts. The event features 29 artists and attracts over 100 audience each month, and the response has been overwhelming to date. The FLAME project has worked with hundreds of women artists of Zimbabwe since its inception, and expanded to a regional outreach in 2010 with the first-ever FLAME REGIONAL TOUR, which included 4 top women African artists – ‘Mingas’ (Mozambique), Mpumie Twala and Ndithini Mbali (South Africa) and Dudu Manhenga (Zimbabwe) touring the region and performing in Maputo, Swaziland, Johannesburg and Harare in May/June 2010 – a riveting performance and powerful stance by women artists of Africa which attracted hundreds of people