Step towards making Oyster Fest more inclusive

Knysna municipality and the Pick n Pay Knysna Oyster festival embarked on an event incubator initiative, which encourages emerging event coordinators/owners to improve their existing skill set and become successful coordinators. The Oyster Festival is an ideal platform to launch a programme of this nature.

Festival manager Glendyrr Fick says, “The festival received criticism over the fact that the event is not inclusive enough. One of the key objectives of the festival is to create economic benefits for Knysna through various events.

This inspired the concept of the Knysna event incubator programme.”

Adverts were placed in local publications and on social media to make potential participants aware of the opportunity. We received 11 applications of which nine were viable, and after each candidate was interviewed, five candidates were selected from the group.

They are Oliver Mabukane, Vuvu Ralushe, Anel de Bruyn, Theodore Oelf and Bulelani Memani.

Knysna mayor Eleanore Bouw-Spies says, “It is great to meet these event coordinators who will hopefully develop their skills and companies to take the Oyster Festival and many other local events into the future ensuring an inclusive, innovative and inspired Knysna. We are excited and can’t wait to see the impact of this programme on the 2018 Oyster Festival.”

The programme will include accredited events management training, mentoring support, as well as marketing and financial management training.

The training component will commence in January 2018.