/ 10 March 2015

SA and UK reach out to each other through the arts

The world's most popular search engine has produced a "Google doodle" to mark South Africa's fifth democratic elections.
The world's most popular search engine has produced a "Google doodle" to mark South Africa's fifth democratic elections.

“This is a good news story,” poet and activist Lebo Mashile proclaimed at the launch of the artists and/or organisations chosen to take part in the SA-UK Seasons 2014 and 2015. “In the era of Eskom and Sona, and all these other things that are going on in our public lives, this is a story of how government is doing something right,” she said.

READ: Full list of projects chosen by the SA-UK Seasons’s joint organising committee

Mashile was speaking at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on Friday to an audience of art practitioners, dignitaries and the media at the announcement of about 40 projects chosen to be part of the 2015 joint artistic programmes between South Africa and the United Kingdom. 

Short of Arts Minister Nathi Mthethwa, dignitaries at the event included the likes of deputy director general of the department of arts and culture Maseapo Kganedi and Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy to South Africa Baroness Patricia Scotland.

“The projects [chosen by SA-UK Seasons] … serve to challenge and update perceptions of contemporary culture and creativity in both countries,” said Bongani Tembe, commissioner general of SA-UK Seasons. 

Tembe was speaking at the launch ahead of the weekend performances and SA-UK Seasons initiatives: jazz singer Judith Sephuma at the Jazz Café in Camden, London, legendary music group Mango Groove at London’s Apollo Hammersmith and award-winning a capella trio The Soil, who performed at Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II, among others.

(Umsindo Thath’i Cover Orkestra. Photo by: Kutlwano Moagi and Tjorven Bruyneel)

SA-UK Seasons is a project between the South African department of arts and culture and the British Council and, according to the Seasons, is a multifaceted collaboration between South Africa and the United Kingdom “with a particular focus on artistic and creative capacity-building and relationship development intended to raise cultural relations between the two countries”.

“Every form of art is represented in the 40 projects that have been chosen,” Scotland said at the event. Some of the projects selected include local photography collective I See A Different You, which will present its I See A Different SA-UK project that aims to showcase “South Africa and the United Kingdom through the lens and style of the I See A Different You collective”.

Also selected is the Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Residency; a production between Johannesburg’s Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Festival and the Networked Bodies Festival at Watermans in London. According to the Seasons, the residency aims to bring together SA and UK practitioners from the three fields of software, hardware and art.

Five months after both countries put out an open call for applications and receiving over 400, about a 10th of those were selected by the SA-UK Seasons’s joint organising committee. 

In addition to the projects chosen, the SA Season in the UK – which are made up of South African projects in the UK managed and funded by the department of arts and culture – will be comprised of about 40 projects. And Connect ZA – which are UK projects in South Africa managed and funded by the British Council – comprises of over 20 projects in 2015. 

Visit the SA-UK Seasons website for more information