Andries Oliphant speaks to Thebe Mabanga about a blueprint for development of the arts through corporate funding
The Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) has done well but has a number of key areas to improve on, believes Andries Oliphant. “We set out to establish a sustainable trust whose funding benefit will be available in perpetuity and I believe we have made some good progress,” he says of the body he has chaired since it became operational in 1996, having been founded in 1994.
Oliphant would like to see ACT contribute to the arts by highlighting achievements and needs in the arts. One of the ways of highlighting achievements is staging the Arts & Culture Trust Awards. The awards are an attempt to reward excellence in eight categories encompassing arts coverage in print and electronic media, development and education, administration, sponsorship, publicity as well as lifetime achievement.
A high priority in the next five years is to double the number of founding trustees from the current five. Founding trustees are institutions that contribute a minimum of R1-million a year to the trust. The trust currently enjoys the generous support of Nedbank, the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, hotel group Sun International, the Netherlands Embassy and cellphone giant Vodacom.
The trust has innovative and ambitious plans to raise private sector funding. A method mooted by Oliphant is to encourage existing founding trustees to create affinity products that will mutually benefit the trust and the sponsor. A prime example of this is Nedbank’s range of arts and culture Affinity products. Through a range of branded credit cards as well as savings and cheque accounts, Nedbank makes a donation either as a portion of annual turnover or by charging a premium whenever a client uses any of the facilities.
“We need to enhance the role of the board of trustees in promoting ACT in the arts community,” says Oliphant. He feels this could be done by getting trustees in touch with regions to be able to offer advice and to assess the needs of artists.
Funding takes the form of bursaries and cash grants for specific projects. During the past six years, the trust has given out R5,3-million in grants to about 30 projects per cycle. In its latest funding cycle, from May last year, R1,3-million was given out.
Beneficiaries have included the Women’s Arts festival and the Jomba! dance indaba, held annually in Durban, the prestigious Dakar Biennale and artist Santu Mofokeng. The trust also seeks to help developmental projects. That is why there have been allocations like the R15 000 grant for two Cape Town primary schools learners to participate in a visual arts and design workshops.
The trust would also like to strengthen and encourage civil society initiatives like community arts festivals and, where possible, assist with funding.
Oliphant concludes by noting, “There is room for a variety of funding agencies in securing funding for the arts,” adding that there is no shortage of talent and creativity in the arts. The drawback seems to lie in areas like management of institutions, which are grappling with transformation. The challenge remains being to improve on the insufficient resources allocated to the arts and to make arts more universally accessible.