HEALTHY AND ’ARTY
Hard times or not, works of high quality will be on offer as usual
As South Africans brood and stew over the recession, junk status and high unemployment, cynics may wonder how relevant large-scale arts showpieces such as the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown are to the country.
They might argue that the arts are a luxury and that national belt-tightening will inevitably lead to households across the socioeconomic spectrum cutting down on pursuits seen as nonessential. And let’s not even talk about the ever shrinking public and corporate funding for the arts.
Of course arts lovers and practitioners will tell you that the fruits of the creative spirit are more important than ever when times are tough, and help people to dissect, discuss and make sense of their fraught reality.
Ashraf Johaardien, who assumed the mantle of executive producer of the NAF’S main programme nine months ago, is a realist but still believes in the value of the arts.
He says the NAF marks “high season” in Grahamstown: “It’s like Cape Town at Christmas time.” It’s boom time for the local economy. And he fervently hopes that if you stage it — and stage it well — the audiences will come.
This year the continent’s largest multidisciplinary arts bonanza wakes up the otherwise sleepy Eastern Cape university town over 11 days from June 29 to July 9.
Hundreds of actors, musicians, dancers, artists and technicians will shack up in draughty digs, stock up on box wine and try to hustle back the money they’ve invested in their passion projects. If they’re lucky, they’ll turn a small profit and be creatively enriched by networking with their peers. Some will leave disillusioned and broke, but no-one said the arts and culture landscape was a fair one.
Counting every cent
Johaardien takes a pragmatic approach. “We may be in a technical recession, and the world is changing,” he says, referring to the example of President Donald Trump’s call to eliminate the US’S national arts endowment fund, “but the festival remains an example of arts being a major driver of the economy.
“If you remove the arts festival, you’d be robbing the region of the third-largest contributor to its economy, after Rhodes University and the Makana municipality.”
A 2013 Rhodes University study estimated that the festival had contributed about R350m to the local economy every year. “In a relatively poor province such as the Eastern Cape, this represents a considerable inflow of funds that would otherwise not have been attracted to the region,” the study noted. ➦
In its 43 years it’s been the audience’s festival and we have to protect that legacy Ashraf Johaardien