When is an arts festival not quite an arts festival? When it’s, like, the Cape Town Festival, bru. Down in the so-called Mother of all Cities, the annual festival of music, theatre, fine arts and related activities gets off to a sputtering start this week — I think. Opinions about the exact start-up date are divided, but somehow it permeates the air round about this week that the fourth annual city festival is happening.If last year’s experience is anything to go by, hot night-time fare-with-flair will include Night Vision — that sees trendy Loop and Long streets at the top end of the city closed to traffic, the shops, eateries and clubs staying open — and Art Night on March 20, which shot a 25m fashion ramp down jivey Long Street. I asked a Norwegian friend — a regular visitor to the Cape at this time of the year — what he thought of the festival. “What festival?” he replied. “Jazz? Night shopping? I just thought these were the things going on in Cape Town this time of year.”This vague sense of “things going on” rather than a shaped event points to the festival’s slipshod marketing — and hence to the hefty budget cuts an already shoestring-funded event has suffered in the past year. Consequently, the international profiling of the festival is nondescript: no wonder Capetonian cultural role-players were recently upset by a Newsweek story that punted the city as one of the world’s “cultural meccas” tourist destinations — and made no mention of local arts and culture.Says Marilyn Martin, director of the National Gallery: “The only cultural aspect highlighted was that we’re a cheap destination for filmmakers. This points to grossly inadequate marketing of our cultural resources.”Brent Meersman is the arts events manager and prime mover behind the sharply focused Seventh World Congress on Art Deco, which from March 23 to 28 offers a truly innovative series of lectures, exhibitions, walking tours and movies of the much-neglected distinctive local interior art and architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. The congress is attracting high-powered visitors from Europe and North America. Meersman attests to the excitement our theatre, music and fine art generate overseas. “While politicians opine and businessmen cavil, South Africans who travel know how the world regards our cultural product. It’s crazy that we don’t recognise its value ourselves — and do more to promote it alongside our beaches, winelands and nightclubs. Not that we’ve got any posh nightclubs, by the way.”While the festival office has tried to keep backstage infighting out of the press, a media release from former festival director Zayd Minty, of the erstwhile artists’ collective Blac, frankly announces that “the festival tries to eke out a major event on a R1,2-million budget after a reduction of R1-million in its budget by the city (ostensibly because the Democratic Alliance bankrupted the city in its short two-year reign). Aluta Continua!”The festival — launched by the mayor with cheap wine, loud hoopla and little detail at CD Wherehouse (why?) two months ago — appears to have fallen between the cracks while the politicians fight for turf at City Hall and the Provincial HQ. The uneasy NPP-ANC alliance now ruling in both roosts has not translated into much-needed revenues for the festival — supposedly a showcase of the Cape at its autumnal best. My Norwegian continues: “Unless you visit the website or buy a magazine only obtainable on the streets [Big Issue], you won’t really know what’s going on. Also it’s quite clear other events are taking place anyway, such as the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Bollywood and the Grandwest Casino, are just piggy-backed by the organisers on to the city festival to make the programme look bigger. It’s shoddy.”Meersman asserts that “cultural tourism — the idea that the arts should be part of what pulls visitors to this city — is completely undeveloped.”We live in a philistine city where the marketability of our culture isn’t seen by the people in charge — public sector or private. The recent White Paper on tourism doesn’t refer to arts and culture at all.”Doesn’t the tourist industry realise Europeans and Americans are in the habit of seeing shows, concerts and exhibitions in the evenings? You’d struggle to find out this kind of information in the Cape.” The producers of two long-running summer-season shows in Cape Town agree about the tourist pull of their products. Richard Loring’s local-roots spectacular African Footprint and the David Kramer-Taliep Petersen musical District Six have enjoyed buoyant houses — and both managements reckon overseas tourists are a significant slice of their audience.The District Six management actively seeks out overseas patrons. “We are in partnership with tour operators, hotels and guest houses to promote the show, with excellent results,” says marketing manager Renaye Kramer. “But we’re not helped by the fact that you can’t book via Computicket from overseas.”David Kramer adds: “Shows have little visibility in the Cape Town tourist centre. I found our flyers among a section at their Waterfront office called ‘Arts and Culture’. Nearby was a section called ‘Night Life’. That sounds much sexier. Aren’t we nightlife then?”Sheryl Ozinsky, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, freely acknowledges that “arts and culture is the stepchild of our economy — while other sectors are well-founded, culture is groping in the dark”. However, she believes throwing public money at the sector is “inappropriate” until a thorough examination of “the vision of the soul of the nation” culture is putting forward has been studied.”Issues were clear during the struggle. What are we trying to portray now? A developing versus a developed ethos? A fusion of European and African culture? We were going to have a conference in August to address these issues, but because it takes time to get role-players in place we are hosting a series of workshops instead.”If that sounds like typical bureaucratic fudging — and an invitation to more of the kind of sententious hot air a certain school of “arts activist” (rather than artists per se) likes to indulge in — listen to Marilyn Martin: “The city may have one museum on its bankroll, but it does not fund the local Ibizo museum network at all. Europeans abroad visit museums and galleries — it’s just something they do. “We deliberately schedule local art events — such as the current William Kentridge exhibition, which has brought thousands of South Africans and overseas visitors to the National Gallery — for December because tourists want to see indigenous art. Workshops are all very well, but we have a vision and a mission of what we do. By showcasing indigenous art, we draw overseas visitors, too.”All role-players agree that visitors and tourists alike suffer from too many events all at once — Ozinsky reckons “overall coordination” is needed to space out festivals as diverse as Spier Arts, Cape Town City, North Sea Jazz and film festivals — but at the base is what Meersman calls a “fundamental under-valuing” of “the art and the practitioners who earn plaudits in London, New York, Harare and Lagos.” “Soul of the nation” workshops aside, isn’t it time the city, the province and the chambers of commerce met to strategise the funding and promotion of our cultural life as a tourist asset — while we still have one? Meanwhile, catch you at the festival … sort of.
The Cape Town Festival runs until March 30. For details see www.capetownfestival.co.za or call Tel: (021) 448 2020. The Seventh World Congress on Art Deco takes place from March 23 to 29. See www.art deco2003.com or call Tel: 082 568 9940