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About

vinspired Lake of Stars is an award winning festival that takes place in the warm heart of Africa on the palm fringed shores of the continent’s third largest lake. The event promotes Malawian arts and tourism and provides travellers and Malawians alike with the opportunity to enjoy incredible live performances in an exotic and beautiful location.

Our work has three key themes:

Arts
The festival brings international talent to Africa to play alongside local performers, providing quality entertainment and unique fusions and collaborations.

Travel
Through the creation of a landmark arts event and the subsequent media exposure light has been shed on the tourist attractions of the country.

Development
Bringing talent and industry professionals to the country will help to develop the entertainment industry.  Associated projects are helping the media and tourist industries of the country. It is estimated the festival has been responsible for over a half a million pounds of spend in its six year history.

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Background

The festival was borne from a desire to raise money for a developing economy, help promote Malawi as a tourist destination and expose Malawian artists to international crowds. Set on the shimmering, palm-fringed shores of Lake Malawi International and African artists gather for a musical, social and cultural exchange unlike anything you will have seen before. For many the festival is the focal point of travelling around this beautiful country, forming part of an itinerary spanning what Malawi has to offer. You can travel direct to Malawi or make your own way across Africa to the festival.

Lake of Stars takes inspiration from events like Live Aid, WOMAD and Glastonbury . The difference is that LOS uses arts-tourism to generate revenue and exposure for Malawi.

Tourism for development

The Malawi government has recognised the part that tourism can play in the country’s economy.

‘….we have analysed the economy and looked at where there is the largest potential [for development] and we believe that tourism will play a vital role.’
(the President, quoted in Forbes Report).

‘The development of the tourism industry as a major foreign exchange earner is one of the Malawi government’s key objectives.’
(SADC report)

‘More recently, tourism has been identified by the Government as possessing the potential to assist in economic and social development in the country, particularly through employment creation and in the generation of much needed foreign exchange.’
(Strategic Tourism Development Plan: UNDP/WTO)

Will Jameson - vinspired Lake of Stars Festival Founder & Director

Will Jameson first visited Malawi in 1998 when he worked in Dwangwa as a volunteer with the Wildlife Society for 6 months. During that time he travelled to Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. On returning to England Will took with him a souvenir – an empty carton of ‘Chibuku Shake Shake’ beer. Half way through university at Liverpool John Moores he decided to start a clubnight with friends Damo Jones, Charlene McDaid and Rich McGinnis. They named the night after the Malawian beer and went on to win Best UK Club in the Mixmag Awards in 2004.

It was in this same year that Will launched the first Lake of Stars Festival headlined by Chibuku favourite, Groove Armada’s Andy Cato . The festival attracted dozens of people from the UK and hundreds attended from all over Malawi and southern Africa . It won the Malawi Tourism Award in its first year and is now one of the highlights of the international festival calendar.

vinspired Lake of Stars project

In 2009 Lake of Stars became vinspired Lake of Stars in recogniton of our work with volunteers and their support of the festival.

v is the national young volunteers’ service is an independent UK charity dedicated to helping young people volunteer in ways that matter to them.

Its mission is to make volunteering opportunities so diverse, compelling and easy to get involved with that giving up your time to help others becomes a natural lifestyle choice for 16-25 year olds in England.   Since its launch in May 2006, vinspired has worked with over 500 charities and community organisations to create over 900,000 youth volunteering opportunities. Of these, 467,000 are short term or taster opportunities, 421,00 0 are part time, and 20,000 are full time. Over 400,000 of these have already been taken up, with the rest being offered to young people up to March 2011.

v believes that every young person has the right to volunteer, and reaches out to disadvataged young people and those who've never considered volunteering. v's projects are designed to engage young people who are under-represented  in volunteering.

Keep up to date with the on the volunteering by volunteers blog http://thelakeofstars.blogspot.com/