The University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) has announced that their third annual Hamwe Festival will take place virtually November10-14, 2021.
UGHE believes that building bridges across sectors is a necessity, not only to improve access to services and the quality of healthcare delivery around the world but also to eliminate the gap between the most and least disadvantaged.
It is in this spirit that UGHE created the Hamwe Festival, a platform that brings the health sector together with creative industries. This year, the festival will be a hybrid one, taking place in various locations around Kigali, as well as online.
The first edition of the festival, Hamwe 2019, explored a diverse range of possible collaborations between creative industries and health sectors.
The second edition of the festival took place online from November 11th to November 15th, 2020, and discussed Mental Health and Social Justice through the prism of the arts and art-based research, reaching more than 26,000 viewers from all over the world.
For its third edition, Hamwe Festival aims to reflect on the social changes that have occurred since the start of the SRAS-COVID-2 (COVID-19) pandemic in late 2019. In particular, there is going to be reflection on how these changes have affected health and social systems and the inequities within them.
The festival invites artists, scholars, community organizers, and health professionals to reflect on how COVID-19 interacted with diverse but linked issues such as family structure, elderly care, healthcare financing, community solidarity, taxation, migration, mental health, climate change, biodiversity as well as the important role of creativity and the arts.
The opening ceremony of the Hamwe Festival will take place on today, Wednesday November 10 at 4:00PM CAT at Kigali Public Library and will feature remarks from representatives from the Government of Rwanda, UGHE Vice Chancellor Prof. Agnes Binagwaho, and Partners In Health (PIH) CEO Dr. Sheila Davis.
The ceremony will also include a preview of the films produced by UGHE for Visualizing the Virus – an international digital project that showcases and investigates the diverse ways in which SARS-Cov2 and the COVID-19 pandemic is visualized and the inequalities it makes visible.
It will also include insightful interviews with artists and a live musical performance.
Hamwe Festival has attracted speakers and artists from 13 countries and will feature a variety of sessions through the course of the 5-day event, including panel discussions, presentations from health professionals, lively and engaging performances from artists from around the world, film screenings, a short story contest, and curated exhibitions.
For the second year in a row, Hamwe Festival is partnering with WellcomeTrust, the independent global charitable foundation, as part of Mindscapes, their international cultural programme about mental health.
Wellcome supports scientists, takes on big health challenges, campaigns for better science & helps everyone get involved in research.
Hamwe Festival embodies these values through the provision of a creative outlet where implementors and artists discuss better, more innovative ways to improve health care through the arts.
Hamwe Festival believes that including artists in the design and implementation of more health programs can be a catalyst for action against seemingly intractable health challenges and looks forward to continuing to build this platform to encourage more collaboration and innovation.
