Call for applications: Chale Wote Festival

This community-based festival takes place in Jamestown – one of Accra’s historic communities – and presents Ghana-based and international artists working together.

By working with resident artists in the city, Chale Wote has given Accra a facelift, revealing interconnected collectives working in multidisciplinary practices that are at the core of the festival. 

Theme

This year's theme, Wata Mata, is the final installment in a Chale Wote trilogy that began with African Electronics, a blueprint for plugging into indigenous technologies to create the impossible and open up new spaces of social consciousness. Spirit Robot, a universal TRANSmitter of radical reconstruction, spreads these electric pathways of knowledge into different directions, linking with global diasporas practicing and creating art about African liberation. More and more, we are compelled to turn to ourselves, to adapt and innovate our own systems to thrive. Wata Mata is where this work happens – in an endless space of form-making.

Wata is about the seen and unseen – it’s an all access dream machine and maker of regenerative knowledge systems. Wata Mata is a memory incubator that reanimates our bodies against coerced amnesias about who we are and what we are capable of manifesting. In 2017, we refashion the ghost limbs of history into new extensions of being.  

Wata Mata is our creator's manifesto – the key to persistently evolve and space-shift into cosmograms of freedom.

Information for applicants

This call for artists is extended to visual and installation artists, interventionists, musicians, makers, photographers, performance artists, filmmakers, thespians, poets, architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, scholars and more. The festival will also accept proposals for talks, workshops, panel discussions and film screenings for The LABS @ CHALE WOTE (August 17 and 18).

As the festival seeks to create an opportunity for artists to network, all participating artists must be available during the festival from 14 to 20 August to meet one another, share and exchange (in several planned activities) as well as to work on production for the festival. The festival will accept existing and new works that are in accordance with this year’s theme. 

International artists

This is an independent, community-based festival and support for participation is limited. International artists are encouraged to seek private and public sources to fund participation (travel, lodging, food, transportation and production costs).

Ghana-based artists

As Chale Wote is an independent, community-based festival, support for Ghana-based artists is limited. The festival is only able to provide a production stipend to a selected number of artists who will present works at the festival. All other artists are encouraged to seek external means of support for production.

Guidelines

For the LABS @ CHALE WOTE (August 17 and 18), applicants should submit:

• CVs, 1-2 page proposal of project and one (1) sample of work per person. Filmmakers and video artists must submit completed short or feature length films/videos for review.
• Applicants interested in participating on August 19 and 20 should submit an artist resume (bio, artist statement and CV), 1-2 page proposal of project, and five (5) samples of work.
• Images must be in jpg or png form.
• Films or videos should be submitted via link or WeTransfer.
• Audio files should be formatted and sent as MP3.
• All applications should be submitted in a zip file with the applicant’s name and subject line: CHALE WOTE 2017 Application to accra.alt@gmail.com
• Deadline for applications is 7 May.

For more information on this call for applications, see here.