BY SHARON SIBINDI THE National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) has begun rolling out a series of short videos, Khula Udweba, through social media platforms targeting children to ensure they enhance their knowledge of visual artwork. NGZ director in Bulawayo Butholezwe Nyathi told NewsDay Life & Style that visual art was now one of the examinable subjects in terms of the new education curriculum at primary level. “While we are in the lockdown, as an institution, we have seen it fit to work with our resident artists to get them to do diverse activities using already found material so that children at home can find an alternative social activity to do which also enhances their visual artwork knowledge since visual art is also now a formal examinable subject at primary level,” he said. Nyathi said their intention was to create content that families, parents, guardians can do with their children, adding that this was one of the ways to improve the institution’s visibility. “The thrust is that people are in lockdown and are stuck at home, so this initiative seeks to answer the question to what extent art can be used as one of the social activities in a household set-up,” he said. “We are encouraging people to use the readily available materials that are found in the household set-up to create various pieces of artwork, like if you want to use glue, you can easily mix sugar and water.” Nyathi said to date, they had done three videos and distributed them via Twitter and Instagram.
