SA: 2021 MBMS festival to be hosted on WhatsApp

The event is courtesy of the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, National Arts Council of South Africa and the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative. The dates and the line-up for the festival will be announced soon.

“Needing to create an online version of My Body My Space, as a result of the current COVID-19 reality, necessitated an intense period of deep searching, researching and many, many amazing conversations with others on the same journey and with thought-leaders and doers in the sector,” MBMS artistic director Peter Sabbagha said.

Sabbagha said anyone is free to access the festival and that the event would play a crucial role in bridging the digital divide and democratising the digital space.

“This is a space that currently excludes many, particularly those in low-income groups, due to unaffordable data costs,” he said. “The place we have arrived at as a festival team is massively exciting for us as it enables our commitment to key issues around access, inclusion and art in public spaces (whatever that means in the digital world), art in the everyday, while respecting the time and context that engulfs us all at this moment.”

MBMS will use WhatsApp through Turn.io, a cloud-based application that integrates directly with the WhatsApp Business API. Turn.io enables organisations to engage efficiently at scale, with artificial intelligence assistance. Similar WhatsApp lines have been used since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organisation and South Africa’s Department of Health.

“What this means for festival audiences is direct access to festival content on their mobile phones,” a statement reads. “This happens through an easy opt-in process, by sending a specific prompt to the WhatsApp line. Festival audiences then interact with a simple menu that delivers the content immediately to their phones. Content on the WhatsApp line is by necessity and design light on data, making the platform an affordable one.”

The festival will feature short-form works of one to three minutes long. “The bite-sized quality of the content, the easy access to the festival platform and the light demand on data, means that audiences can access the works whenever they like and wherever they are, hopefully engaging with MBMS content in the course of their everyday lives. In this way MBMS hopes to continue its public art identity in the digital space.”

MBMS has grown considerably in popularity since its inception in 2015. The event is known for attracting award-winning local and international artists and organisations, plus a large and diverse audience from South Africa and around the world.