Stars of the Future Set for ‘Women-Only Edition’  

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Charterhouse Productions and Convenor of the National Women’s Summit and Expo, Theresa Oparebea Ayoade, has hinted at the possible return of the music reality show, Stars of the Future, this time focusing on women only.

Speaking in an interview on Joy Prime’s Changes show, Mrs. Ayoade suggested that the show could return, but this time with a focus on women only. She explained that the music industry may not have treated female artistes as fairly as their male counterparts and that the show could help elevate women’s talents.

“We’ve actually been thinking about coming back with the Stars of The Future for women because we need to see more female musicians coming out. The structure of the industry may not be too kind to them that’s why we may see women struggling to breakthrough,” she said.

Her statement comes amid growing concerns from female musicians about the challenges they face in the industry. Charterhouse has been supporting women in the industry through its awards scheme, the Telecel Ghana Music Awards, which aims to highlight and reward talent.

Mrs. Ayoade further noted that Charterhouse has also established a foundation, the Charterhouse Africa Creative Foundation, to identify and address pressing issues in the creative industry. She emphasized that the foundation is meant to create initiatives that can help strengthen the sector and support artistes, particularly women.

“I think that the scheme is probably a reflection of what pertains in the industry. So I feel that if we have to fix it, we would have to fix the challenge in the industry. To address that, we have set up a foundation called the Charterhouse Africa Creative Foundation and in that foundation, we’ve come up with initiatives that address some of the gaps that we see in the creative industry at large because having being in the industry for over 25 years, we’ve worked with practically all sectors and we see where the gaps are.

So the foundation was setup to come up with initiatives to partner with sound like-minded institutions to address some of these gaps and one of them that we’ve addressed is the women in the creative arts. We’ve come up with some initiatives that can bring them together more as a collective and see how we can be more deliberate and intentional about promoting them,” she explained.

Mrs. Ayoade also acknowledged that the awards scheme is limited by the number of entries it receives from female artistes.

“The award scheme is doing its best to provide support, but it cannot do much if there are not as many entries from female artistes as there are from males,” she said, adding that this imbalance in the industry needs urgent attention.

The show, which was the first musical competitive reality programme in Ghana organized by Charterhouse Productions, gained popularity for discovering talents such as Irene Logan, Efya, and Kaakie in its earlier editions.

However, after the 2011 edition, the show went dormant, leaving many aspiring musicians without a platform to showcase their abilities.