If you thought technology could not get any cooler – it did! In a first of its kind, The My Body My Space (MBMS): Public Arts Festival is planning a ‘Festival on your phone’ as MBMS Artistic Director PJ Sabbagha described it.
“Needing to create an online version of My Body MySpace, as a result of the current Covid-19 reality, necessitated an intense period of deep searching, researching, and many, many amazing conversations with others on the same journey and with thought-leaders and doers in the sector,” he added.
The initiative received financial support from The National Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture (DSAC) and The National Arts Council (NAC). It will be administrated by The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative and is set to the very first arts festival to take place on – believe on or not – a WhatsApp line.
[also read] – The Soweto Festival Expo kicks off this weekend
The WhatsApp festival will make use of a cloud application called TURN.io which works directly with the WhatsApp Business API. Tech lovers may recall a slightly similar use of WhatsApp lines was applied by South Africa’s Department of Health and SASSA as part of our Covid response.
For non- techs, this means the service will work in this way: audiences can simply send a specific prompt message to the WhatsApp line and get access to Festival content, which they can engage with daily. And that’s just the tip of a very cool iceberg. For those worried about the data costs associated with such an innovation, PJ Sabbagha reassured that the festival will be inclusive, which is to say, the content will be low sized and accessible.
“The place we have arrived at as a festival team, is massively exciting for us, as it enables our commitment to key issues around Access, Inclusion, and Art in public spaces (whatever that means in the digital world), art in every day while respecting the time and context that engulfs us all at this moment,” Sabbagha said.
The 2021 edition promises to be something special, with a full program and dates set to be announced soon!
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