Life Beats.Arts.Journalism.HIV

Life Beats.Arts.Journalism.HIV

Please note that the Life Beats Project is postponed until further notice!

The Life Beats project seeks to foster a synergy between arts journalism and health journalism, particularly journalism covering HIV and AIDS, to promote a more holistic and integrated media coverage of the epidemic. The project is a partnership between DFL and the HIV/AIDS and the Media Project that will be introduced as part of the Drama for Life Festival in August and September 2011.

This initiative recognises the importance and the potential of both the media and the arts in covering HIV and AIDS and therefore proposes a cross-pollination between the arts and health journalism, by promoting media coverage of HIV through the arts.

By inviting journalists from selected African countries to attend the Drama for Life Festival in August 2011, this project intends to train journalists with either an arts background or a health background, in reporting HIV and the arts. This training will be done by means of a workshop that will familiarize journalists with both the technicalities of HIV reporting as well as the intricacies of covering the arts. By bringing together journalists from both fields and familiarizing them with each other’s specialisation, this project hopes to stimulate debate and discussion and to foster a hitherto unprecedented partnership between the health and the arts beats – all in the interest of addressing HIV and AIDS.

Watch this space for details of the 2011 Life Beats workshop.

For more information please contact Lonwabo Mavuso:
Email: Lonwabo.mavuso@wits.ac.za; Tel: +27 11 717 4735