Fest CEO issues challenge
National Arts Festival CEO Tony Lankester has dismissed statements that the festival is moving more and more away from the township as factually incorrect and has called on township entrepreneurs to come up with creative ideas for the 11-day spectacle.
Speaking during the National Arts Festival media launch at the city hall on Wednesday, Lankester said this statement was incorrect because if you look at the map of the Festival which has the dots of where all 60 venues that they run are you can see that they are spread out throughout the town.
“Sure they are not that present in the township but they are not moving away from the township. In fact our venues have remained pretty static over the last couple of years,” he said.
Lankester said the issue was mainly around people’s perceptions.
“I think where the perception comes from, because I’m not denying that the perception does exist and I think it’s a very real perception, is a few years back we moved the Village Green from Fiddler’s Green on to Rhodes campus and a lot of people still say you have moved the festival away from us but my response to that is the Village Green is not the festival, the festival runs at 60 venues and the Village Green is one thing that we do in this giant 11 days and yes we moved it,” he said.
Explaining the reasoning behind the move Lankester said: “If you look at Village Green now it’s roughly double the size it was when it was on Fiddler’s Green, it could not have grown to that extent where it was previously, so for reasons of growth it had to go.”
Lankester said in his eight years as CEO of the Festival he has never had a single township tavern owner approach him about providing a Festival venue.
“I would like to put a challenge out to the entrepreneurs who live in the city, because if you look at our venues a lot of them exist because owners of bars or night clubs and so on come to us and say we want to be a Festival venue and they are included on our programme,” he said.
Lankester said if he was approached by a township tavern owner he would most probably say yes to the idea.
“When they come to me and ask me that question the answer will be yes, a resounding yes. Fantastic. How can we work with you to make this a Festival venue?
“If you look at the range of Festival venues that we have already, a lot of them are driven by entrepreneurs in the city who come to us with a great idea for a venue and they come in time so that we can have time to plan and help them because we want people to create places that people can come and enjoy,” he said.
Speaking at the media launch, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi said her department supports a number of flagship projects and festivals in every province of the country.