Poet Julius Jules Banda has come out seeking K2 million to attend Lake of Stars Festival London, United Kingdom (UK), to be held on March 10.
\nBanda has taken to social media to reach out to the public.
\n\u201cI am required to get sponsorship that will cover visa, air tickets and other travel expenses. This is a great opportunity for me and an honour to represent Malawi as a poet,\u201d he said.
\nThe poet has since put up his details, using which people can provide monetary assistance.
\nBut asked why he has come out to ask for support and, yet, he has been invited, Banda said:
\n\u201cI am supported but not financially because this is the first time they are having such [an activity] in UK. Their sponsorship is open to artists in the UK and a few headliners from Africa,\u201d he said.
\nThe poet said he was optimistic that he would raise the K2 million.
\n\u201cSo far, I am at K300, 000 plus,\u201d he said.
\nLake of Stars Founder, Will Jameson, said the artists are being paid but they have already selected artists to come from Malawi.
\n\u201cFaith Mussa and Zaluso Arts will be representing Malawi and are the ones who were selected. The other artists will be [those] already based in UK,\u201d Jameson said.
\nLake of Stars Festival, which returns to the shores of Lake Malawi this year after a one-year break, recently announced that its Glasgow, Scotland, event will be held on March 11 2018.
\nAhead of the main festival in the country from September 28 to 30, Lake of Stars Festival has indicated that it will hold a series of events.
\nJameson said that Lake of Stars Festival Glasgow will be held for a day and that it will be held in collaboration with Scotland Malawi Partnership.
\nHe said, as part of their 15th anniversary celebrations this year, Lake of Stars Festival will have a sequence of events, which will include shows in Zomba, Malawi and London.
\n\u201cOur Glasgow event will take place at the Art School and will feature free day-time performances as well as a Malawi market, followed by a ticketed evening concert with special guests Scott Hutchinson, the lead vocalist of Frightened Rabbit, Ghanaian hip hop artist Manifest and Malawi\u2019s Faith Mussa,\u201d he said.
\nThe others are poet Michael Pedersen of Neu Reekie and DJ Auntie Flo. Other acts will come from Zambia and South Africa.
\nLake of Stars Festival also said that the event will kick-start Scotland\u2019s Buy Malawi Week and feature products such as rice, coffee, tea as part of promoting trade, travel and culture between the two countries.
\nOrganisers of Lake of Stars Festival are yet to announce the venue of the main festival in the country.
\nIn 2016, the festival went back to its original home, Chintheche, in Nkhata Bay.
\nLake of Stars Festival recently indicated in a press statement that it would launch its new United Kingdom event in Walthamstow.
\nThe one-day Lake of Stars London will take place on March 10 2018 and organisers will then host another event in Glasgow the following day.
\nJameson said Lake of Stars Festival London is aimed at promoting blossoming talent from the UK and Africa.
\nLake of Stars Festival has run events and festivals in the UK and Malawi since 2003, showcasing artists from Malawi, across Africa and around the world.
\nJameson said the festival has generated an estimated \u00a31.3 million for Malawi\u2019s economy each year.
\nThe organisers have since said that the event in Zomba, dubbed Set It Off, will be held at Chancellor College\u2014 University of Malawi\u2014 on January 27.
\nMeanwhile, Lake of Stars Festival has indicated that it will start receiving applications from artists, vendors and volunteers in February 2018 and that details on venue and line-up will be announced in March 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poet Julius Jules Banda has come out seeking K2 million to attend Lake of Stars Festival London, United Kingdom (UK), to be held on March 10. Banda has taken to social media to reach out to the public. \u201cI am required to get sponsorship that will cover visa, air tickets and other travel expenses. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58574,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58572\/revisions\/58574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}