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Supporting the Arts - Vital to a healthy society

The Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA)

The Cheeseman has been supporting HIFA since its inception in 1999. This massive carnival event takes place at the end of April each year and draws the crowds in their tens of thousands for six days of joy and excitement, to come and sample the full spectrum of the arts, presented by artists from all over Zimbabwe, the region and the world.

May 2009
The Cheeseman at HIFA 2009 –
an enligh10ed corporate citizen proudly supporting the arts

The theme for HIFA's 10th Anniversary Year was Enligh10ment.

Those who attended in their tens of thousands, were more than familiar with The Cheeseman’s friendly little character, and our association with this festival and with the arts in general. 

Our popular brand of wholesome quality gourmet foods features in eveyone's lives in this country, whether we are stocking up for our family, our party, our supermarket, our restaurant or hotel, or for our picnics or corporate entertainment parties at HIFA. 

The Cheeseman's friendly gem of a home grown company which began its over decade long existence in a cottage in the back garden is one of Zimbabwe’s positive thinking, resourceful and endlessly energetic survivors through think and thin – just like HIFA. 

Like HIFA, The Cheeseman has thrived and grown regardless of all the challenges we’ve faced over these past ten tough years.

The Cheeseman from the outset has chosen the path of responsible and generous corporate behaviour, supporting many community endeavours of various kinds, whether these be to assist the disadvantaged and elderly, to encourage good sportsmanship in the young, to sustain and nurture our beautiful environment or to enrich our lives with lovely art and uplifting music. 

It is no surprise then, that The Cheeseman is a long time committed supporter of HIFA, Zimbabwe’s number one arts festival, and one of the world’s top ten. 

The Cheeseman believes that the arts, like the wholesome, health enhancing foods and drinks it supplies, are essential to healthy living – in the case of the arts, to the health of an entire society. 

Art enables the eloquent and accessible expression of our collective emotional, intellectual and spiritual experiences of the world in which we find ourselves, whether those experiences be harrowing, joyful, sad, hilarious, uplifting, infuriating, terrifying. Art gives voice to that for which we may not have words but which we feel deep in our guts and have a deep need to express.  That expression via art in its many forms can free us, liberate us, pour out the pain or the rage or the loss or the triumph for us, volubly, cathartically. 

It is indeed as essential to a healthy, rounded life as wholesome food. It nourishes the spirit, feeds the soul, makes our lives beautiful, makes us think, makes us laugh, makes us cry, makes us angry, spurs us to action, changes us from within, then inspires us to make changes without. 

The Cheeseman believes that HIFA stands tall as a fundamentally important channel and platform for artistic endeavour in Zimbabwe and is extremely proud of its association with this astonishing festival, which has survived through thick and thin, through the sheer grit determination of a lean team of festival makers.

The Cheeseman believes that the arts are as vital to our whole health both as individuals and as a Society
as eating wholesome food.