How to get around
PLAN TO ATTEND THE NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL Your guide to Grahamstown. WRAP UP
To avoid a big dose of Festival #FOMO, it’s time to start planning for a trip to the country’s biggest bucket-list cultural and social celebration, The National Arts Festival. This year’s festival takes place from June 29 till July 9.
Spanning eleven days, the Festival is held in the Eastern Cape city of Grahamstown, the population of which is boosted by tens of thousands of visitors who buy around 220 000 tickets.
For many it’s an annual pilgrimage and with so many artists, crews and journalists in town, visitors are advised to beat the crowds and make bookings now.
The National Arts Festival’s website is packed with information on how to navigate the experience, and there is an active community of experienced festival-goers on Twitter and on the Festival’s Facebook page. Follow these channels for tips on getting to the festival, booking your accommodation and getting around once you are there.
South Africa’s major airports all service airlines who fly to Port Elizabeth and East London. After touching down in either of these destinations, the trip to Grahamstown is about 130km. Hire a car or jump on board a shuttle. There are various tour and bus companies that provide airport shuttles and transport in and around Grahamstown, see the details in the National Arts Festival’s Hospitality Brochure.
A drive to Grahamstown from Cape Town is 872km (via the Garden Route) and from Johannesburg 992km (via Colesburg). Make a road trip of it and stop off to explore SA along the way. Visitors coming from Gauteng or the Free State should make a beeline for Smithfield and their annual Platteland Preview Festival, which runs from June 30 to July 2 this year. The small town hosts artists en route to the National Arts Festival for free in return for a very special sneak-peek at their shows.
Grahamstown certainly knows the drill after hosting the festival for the last 42 years. Festival visitors can expect accommodation ranging from upmarket B&Bs to student residence rooms and self-catering houses. Accommodation in the town fills up fast – with repeat Festival fans and artists reserving all their favourite spots well in advance.
The festival provides a list of accommodation agents and establishments who can assist in connecting festival-goers to their nests – download the accommodation brochure on the website.
The festival works with local travel operators to create the Festival Hopper – which is free to use (although tips are appreciated by the drivers) – and travels from venue to venue. Cabs on Call also offer private and direct trips for one to two passengers to wherever you need to go at R70 a trip (within a 5km radius) and R100 within a 10km radius.
In 2017 the festival will be doing staggered reveals of the programme and as a result tickets for some of the big shows will come online before the main box office opens early in May. Stay tuned to the festival’s social media platforms and watch the news for details. The programme will also be available online from late April and a limited run of printed programmes will be available at select Exclusive Books and Standard Bank outlets and some theatres from mid-May.
All ticket bookings can be done via nationalartsfestival.co.za, or through the festival call centre on 0860-002-004.
Tickets range in price from R20 to R130, with discounts for pensioners, students and school children. Once at the festival, there are a number of physical box offices, where visitors can purchase tickets using cash, cards or Snapscan.
Grahamstown is known for its icy cold nights. Despite the often warmer days, be sure to pack in a warm jacket and some woolly accessories. There are also lots of local spots to thaw out in including pop-up restaurant, The Long Table, sushi at Cape Town Edge and, by day, the ever-popular and varied options at the Village Green.
Follow the Festival’s feeds and be part of the community. – Citizen reporter