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Raisdon Baya

Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
Organise rs of the inaugural Bulawayo Arts Awards (BAAs) will this week announce nominees after they received over 400 entries for the various categories.

Nominations were closed on May 15 and the BAA team have been collating data ever since.

The unveiling of the nominees will be held at Glen Lodge on Saturday from 7PM.

The awards ceremony will be held at the Large City hall on June 30.

Raisedon Baya who is one of those spearheading the awards said as a team they were generally satisfied with the entries.

“For the first ever arts awards in the city the response was more than satisfactory, proving that the awards were long overdue and that Bulawayo was indeed the city of creative arts and culture. The 2017 call for nominations had nearly 400 responses (nominations/entries) from both the artists and the public in general,” said Baya.

He said out of the nearly 400 entries, music had the most nominations.

“ No m i n a t i o n s /entries were handed in, emailed or submitted via Facebook. Most interesting was the variety — variety in terms of genre and age. As
expected music had the most n o m i n a t i on s /entries taking nearly half the entries, followed by special awards category, fashion, schools awards, theatre and dance,” said Baya.

He added:

“There were very few responses in spoken word, film, literary and visual arts, other categories like the Socialite of the Year — perhaps a serious indicator of the state of the sector, and in particular these
disciplines.”

Meanwhile, the BAAs are running a weekly social media competition to promote the June 30 event.

Weekly winners will walk away with a hamper with products from United Refineries — who are part of the awards partners.

In this week’s competition people are tasked to create a message, text or video, on their expectation about Bulawayo Arts Awards, particularly the June 30 red carpet ceremony and send the message via Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram, to at least 10
recipients (friends, family, friends, colleagues and groups).

Thereafter they should send screen shots of the forwarded messages to 0772214373, 0772903459, 0782447731 and 0772970896.

The winner will be announced Friday June 2 at 2pm on the awards’