PERFORMING ARTS INDABAS

SATI to holdi indabas across South Africa to stimulate debate among local cultural practitioners.

Following last year’s successful Gauteng Theatre and Dance Indaba, the South African Theatre Initiative (SATI) will hold similar indabas across the rest of South Africa, in a bid to stimulate debate among local cultural practitioners.

The first indaba for 2009 will be held in Cape Town at the Baxter Theatre on February 7 and 8. Further indabas will be held in the remaining six provinces during the next few months.

These conferences form part of SATI’s national research and consultation process, in partnership with the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and the National Arts Council (NAC), and are aimed at addressing issues within the various arts disciplines to ensure the growth, development and sustainability of the sector.

Theatre and dance stakeholders in each province – from individual practitioners, administrators and educators to non-governmental organisations and government representatives – are invited to spend two days debating SATI’s key research areas. These are transformation, networking, compliance, human resource development, local market development, and the issue of funding versus sustainability.

A task team will be elected at each provincial indaba and will attend the National Indaba, where all draft resolutions will be debated and recommendations will be made to the DAC to inform policy and future interventions in the arts sector.

“We were thrilled by the lively and constructive debate that characterised the Gauteng Theatre and Dance Indaba last year,” says SATI director Mpho Molepo, “and hope the other provincial indabas will see the same spirit of working together for the good of the arts. As Warren Nebe, the head of the Wits Drama Department, pointed out at the Gauteng indaba, arts is a human rights issue – and through these indabas we hope that this constitutionally enshrined right gets its day in the sun to ensure that the performing arts not only survive, but flourish.”

Those wishing to attend any of the indabas (to which entrance is free) should book their place by phoning SATI at 011 838 8932, or e-mail info@sati.org.za

Quotes from the Gauteng Theatre and Dance Indaba:

“Artists are about early warning systems; they are harbingers of change.” - Adrienne Sichel, journalist

“I am a cultural combatant. I am an artist. I am a soldier.” - Bongani Linda, theatre practitioner

“The Grahamstown Festival will always be whiter than white!” - Bongani Linda

“It is important to celebrate our diversity as Africans and address imbalances in the curricula - most of which come directly from Great Britain.” - Warren Nebe, head of Wits Drama Department

“Indigenous dance should form part of the dance programme [in schools]. However, there are challenges facing us - even while living in Africa, here we could be in Europe." - Qhuzulini John Sithole