BASS festival 2009 commissions: Inspired by Africa and Africans

Our friends at BASS festival in the UK have opened up their Commissions for anyone who has a good and innovative idea on producing an event or work for their month-long string of events in 2009. The theme of next BASS festival is 'Inspired by Africa and Africans', which should provide an opening to many of our readers here at Africanhiphop.com. Proposals are relatively easy to write (400 words) and to submit so why not try? From their website: "BASS Festival (British Arts and Street Sounds) is a month long celebration of Black Music and Art held annualy in June through concerts, exhibitions, conferences, film and more. Events are held mainly in the Midlands region (Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby) with satellite events in cities such as London, Manchester and Bristol."BASS also had us on their panel at June's Emcees for Life conference in Manchester and Birmingham, and we have to give them props for putting down a well organized event with a good balance of true school heavy weights (think Lord Finesse, Ursula Rucker) and younger talent such as Bashy and Ben Sharpa.A key part of the BASS programme has always been its unique commissions. Here artists, organisations and promoters are individually commissioned to produce an event or new piece of work specifically for the festival.For BASS 2009 the organizers are opening up the commissioning scheme (£500 - £3000) to support new work developed for the festival. BASS welcomes applications from any art form (music, film, fashion, visual art, theatre, dance, etc).The deadline for submissions is Friday 16th January, 2009. Check out the Commissions page at the Punch website for full details and an application form.