/ 18 March 2011

All roads lead to Cape Town

The Department of Arts and Culture has proudly continued to support this important Festival because we see the value of its benefits in terms of the jobs it creates and the revenue it generates by attracting large numbers of jazz lovers both local and from abroad.

South Africa and specifically Cape Town become the leading destination for jazz lovers throughout the world during this period. This Festival has grown in stature and size and welcomes more jazz lovers year after year.This Festival also strengthens the local music industry.

It provides a major opportunity to showcase and promote our country to the world. In recent years it has become a sold-out event well before the Festival starts.

The Festival has certainly lived up to its slogan ‘Africa’s grandest gathering” with audience figures continuously growing. During this period, all roads lead to Cape Town, which becomes a veritable hub of activity displaying the colours, sounds and food of the Festival. It becomes a meeting place of all music lovers.

We are proud of the Festival organisers who have succeeded in growing the Festival in just 12 years into this major annual world event, providing sustainable jobs for many people and proving that cultural and creative industries contribute to key economic growth. The Festival contributed R475 Million to the economy of Cape Town and created 2000 jobs in 2010. We hope that these figures will be surpassed in 2011.

This Festival will pay tribute to many of our renowned musicians who passed away last year. In this way we are also promoting the music of those who we have come to recognise as national icons in the arts and who now are part of our rich heritage. We are also promoting an intergenerational dialogue and enriching South African sounds.

We are pleased that this year’s Festival places greater emphasis on skills development and mentoring programmes. This will enable creative arts practitioners to learn key skills that will benefit the sustainable developments of arts and culture enterprises. In this regard, my ministry is also ceased with work on a framework that will lead to the establishment of a National Skills Academy for the Creative Arts.

The Academy is not intended to duplicate already exiting training initiatives, but rather to enhance them and ensure a coordinated intervention.

This means we will work together with all training institutions and provinces, the public and private sector to achieve our objectives. But arts practitioners particularly musicians need platforms to showcase their arts forms — this Festival provides such an opportunity.

Cultural industries and events such as this Festival are critical in advancing our national goals of skills development, job creation and economic growth building sustainable livelihoods for many.

In the near future, we are gathering stakeholders together to think about ways in which we can unleash the potential of the creative industries so that these can make a greater contribution to economic growth and job creation in line with the objectives in government’s new growth path.

The Department of Arts and Culture wishes the Cape Town International Jazz Festival great and continued success in 2011.

Click here for more from the Cape Town International Jazz Festival