Deadline: Phase 2 will close on August 24, 2020
In June and July 2020, Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) in partnership with Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) announced the opening of the applications for their refreshed Scale-Up Alumni Programme.
“This iteration of the programme aims to reconnect with alumni, with the specific objective of deepening impact, developing stronger relationships, and equipping participants with the relevant tools and skills they each require to grow their ventures and enterprises,” says BASA CEO, Ashraf Johaardien. “Through a shared-value approach, it also offers a platform for robust knowledge sharing, community building and access to diverse networks. With COVID-19 inhibiting normal channels of engagement, all programme activities taking place between August and October 2020 will be on virtual platforms and will comprise masterclasses, workshops, mentorship, events and peer coaching,” he explains.
BASA aims to create an enabling space through which creatives can access and share useful knowledge and that has been achieved through these sessions. This quick-change modification of the Programme could not have been achieved successfully, without the support of sponsor, RMB.
Head of BASA Programmes, Tumy Motsoatsoe, comments: “We are really grateful to have a supportive partner such as RMB. We all feel really excited to witness the positive response from our alumni to the first offering of the refreshed programme, which is the Masterclass series. We also understand this change to the method of interaction may pose logistic and administrative challenges for participants, which is why the Programme has prioritised data support to the participants to assist in increasing access to the sessions.”
The programme is being rolled out in two phases as follows:
Phase 1: Masterclasses and Collective Mental Health Workshops
The Masterclasses aim to offer an opportunity for knowledge sharing between all the Programme alumni. Participants had access to speakers and experts on key aspects of their businesses/projects. Topics included:
-Monetising Your Craft with Digital
Marketing and Strategy
-Arts and Business Partnerships:
Cultivating and Achieving Mutual Success
-Packaging Value: Ways to Own and Tell your
Brand’s Story
-Agile and Dynamic Business Models for
Creatives
Phase 2: Once the Masterclass series has been concluded, the applications for Phase 2 will open. Twenty alumni will be selected to continue with the programme. All 20 of these individuals or organisations will receive mentorship and of these, 10 will also receive R15,000 towards their businesses or organisations. The application period for Phase 2 will close on August 24, 2020. During this period, all alumni will have a chance to sign up for the ‘Care and Connect’ sessions. These will take place between August 17 and October 23, 2020.
Offered in partnership with the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA), the objective of the Care and Connect workshops is to offer participants access to tools and resources to successfully develop vigorous mental health strategies and practices in their own lives, as well as in terms of acquiring the tools to identify mental health risks and to support themselves and their communities, through focusing care in their projects’ operations.
BASA will announce the individuals and organisations who will be selected for Phase 2 on September 16, 2020, and the disbursement of grants and the mentorship sessions will take place from September 17 until the end of October 2020.
For more information on the programme, contact Thembi via e-mail scaleup@basa.co.za
(To link direct to the BASA website, click on the advert to the right of this article or visit www.basa.co.za)
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