Loving every part of the ‘happy chaos’

Cindy Renard is the Children’s Arts Festival (CAF) director, a job she has been doing since 2008 – so this is her 10th year at the helm, and it’s also the 30th year of the children’s festival.

With sponsorship from Standard Bank, she leads the CAF team in taking care of hundreds of little festival goers, sometimes organising up to 20 different programmes per day for groups of children.

What is the best part of your job?

So clichéd, but I do love every part of it. Particularly though the buzz on the first day as we are about to throw open the doors and to then experience the joy of knowing that everything that you have worked on for the past 11 months just comes together. I like to call it happy chaos.

During your time at CAF, what was the funniest moment?

A couple of years ago, the group leaders were collapsed in the staff room having their lunch, comfortable in the knowledge that the children were quite fine outside in the quad because there was lots of happy laughter drifting inside. I wandered outside – as I do occasionally – only to discover that they were having the most enormous Jelly Tots food fight. Although I had to put my serious “boss” face on and say that it was not a good idea, I was collapsing inside – it must have been such fun. Imagine being the child to throw the first Jelly Tot! Needless to say, Jelly Tots are no longer part of our packed lunches.

And the time you were most proud of what you and your team pulled together?

Certainly one of the proudest moment was having Joey the horse from the stage show War Horse visit the Children’s Arts Festival – our little festival in little old Grahamstown on the tip of Africa to be visited by this icon, was particularly magical for us.

Best time of the day?

Lunch-time . . . when we have up to 200 children chit-chatting away in the quad about what they have seen or made and getting excited about what they are still going to do.