MBABANE – Sizo Hlophe, Vice-Chairperson of the Eswatini Theatre Club, will be speaking at the upcoming ACCES event in Johannesburg.
ACCES is a premier pan-African platform where music industry players connect, share knowledge, showcase and discover new talent. ACCES serves as a catalyst for growth, placing a significant emphasis on professionalising the sector and facilitating access to key success drivers, particularly for emerging musicians and industry professionals.
Hlophe is overseeing the rejuvenation of Eswatini’s oldest theatre and cultural institution. As an ecosystem builder, he co-founded Antidote Music, the first Eswatini music company to bring local music online and Antidote Culture Foundation, a cultural development organisation. Since 2023, he has supported Sound Diplomacy’s Music Cities Convention and Music Tourism Convention, connecting cities, policymakers and industry stakeholders to strengthen music ecosystems around the world.
Hlophe will be speaking twice at the event and his first will be at a 3.0, a bi-annual cultural policy summit that explores strategies for facilitating and promoting fair culture and cultural exchange in the live performing arts. The summit brings together global leaders from across the industry to bridge the gap between policy and on-the-ground work.
Hlophe has worked at this intersection for several years. In 2022, he was part of the expert group consulted by the German Commission for UNESCO for its Fair Culture Initiative. Since then, the organisations he represents, Antidote Culture Foundation and the Eswatini Theatre Club, have actively addressed gaps in cultural policy. They have developed programmes tailored to sector needs, aiming to fulfill the UNESCO 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist and the UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
Through his work with Sound Diplomacy, Hlophe has gained deep insight into global best practice regarding cultural policy and strategy. The organisation’s Music Cities Awards regularly showcase successful case studies demonstrating the practical implementation of these UNESCO conventions.
In addition to the policy summit, Hlophe will address the main conference panel. He will be joined by industry experts from across the globe. The session will be moderated by Keith Kuhudzai from Kay Media (Zimbabwe). “This discussion will explore how stronger communities and independent music businesses can establish solid foundations for sustainable, scalable international careers. Panelists will address the practical realities of building from smaller music markets, developing artists, creating opportunities and sustaining cultural organisations,” said Hlophe.
Hlophe approaches these issues with the belief that a collaborative ecosystem drives the entire industry forward while establishing clear growth pathways for creatives. “It speaks to the existence of infrastructure, which we are in short of, but need to be creative in harvesting what exists to ensure we build those communities. This is about the Pop up Activation in Manzini as a community, Mic’d Emotions, Yini Loku, Theatre Club and thinking about what spaces are needed to ensure artists have spaces to showcase and grow their work. These are small but important platforms for artists, closing the gap created by large-scale events,” he said.
For Hlophe, international gatherings offer vital opportunities to exchange knowledge and strengthen global networks. “When you go to a conference like this, it is to learn how other people approach this work that we do every day. We go to it to learn some of the best practices in various aspects of the work. What’s more important is being part of a bigger community of practitioners working to solve some of the most complex challenges the sector faces,” he noted.
Hlophe concluded by stating that the community may become some of your future collaborators, advisors and people that keep you going in the industry and for him it is always to see how people can come in to help shape what is already being built in Eswatini.
