Spier Arts Festivals
Historically known as the Spier Arts Summer Season, the Spier Arts Festivals were established in 1996. The Spier Arts Festivals are rooted in the Africa Centre’s raison d’etre – a space where the visual, intellectual and performance cultures of Africa are celebrated, studied and brought to life for diverse audiences in innovative ways. These Festivals are a celebration of African excellence in the performing arts; promote South African artists; provide opportunities for collaboration with Pan-African artists; and build new audiences for the arts.
Poetry
The Spier Poetry Exchange, on 1 and 2 February, will build on the phenomenal success of the Spier Open Air Poetry Festival, which thrilled and challenged South African audiences from 2004-2006. This Festival will be curated by Malika Ndlovu and Lorelle Royeppen-viegi and will be performed on the Spier Estate. [+]
Performance
The Performing Arts Festival, from 26 February to 2 March, will be curated by Brett Bailey and Jay Pather. Using Cape Town inner-city venues, the emphasis will be on developing original work and re-staging works outside of the usual performance spaces — on the streets, in train stations, churches and other exciting locations. [+]
Music
The Pan African Space Station
1-4 October 2008, Cape Town
The Pan African Space Station (PASS) is a four-day a music intervention from October 1-4 across greater Cape Town. The festival is presented by the Africa Centre with the support of Spier, and it is curated by Ntone Edjabe and Neo Muyanga. The primary aim of the project is to articulate, musically, the Africa Centre’s programmatic theme of entangled nations in an African context. The event is an opportunity for Capetonians and visitors to engage up-close with the rich and complex web of creative expression which binds Africans across the globe.
PASS plays host to genre-busting music outfits from global Africa dedicated to exploring new musical territory. In the main, the festival seeks to profile local and international acts which may not yet have reached household-name status in South Africa, but which are nonetheless at the very top of their game. Participating artists include Nacao Zumbi (Brazil), Ayetoro (Nigeria/Ghana), Cindy Blackman Quartet (US), Ze Maria Quartet (Mozambique/Angola) and a range of progressive South African artists, including Carlo Mombelli and the Prisoners of Strange (Jhb), Blk Jks (Jhb), Rock Art (C T) and many others.
PASS will not only bring music lovers together, the festival will also seek to acknowledge and profile new and existing independent music venues across the city. The music happenings will be arranged to occur at staggered time and space intervals to help affirm and disrupt, both, the music and geography of the city. However, these disparate venues across Cape Town will be brought closer together through a temporary transport network of buses, which will serve the festival’s routes, facilitating greater mobility in our notoriously rigid cultural environment. Through this approach, venues such as Langa’s Guga S’thebe and Assembly in District Six may be linked conceptually. Other selected venues include Mowbray’s Town Hall and the Slave Church Museum on Long Street.
One of the headline acts of the festival will be a unique RADIO STATION. The radio station will broadcast 30 days of cutting edge music from global Africa to the greater Cape Town. This will be a true meeting place for the diverse music audiences in the city. Volunteer DJs, hosts and producers will be welcome to participate from all of Cape Town music communities. PASS radio will broadcast from studios in the city centre and live from the city’s public spaces: malls, gardens, community centres, and clubs before and throughout the music festival. PASS radio will be non-profit and will not broadcast commercial adverts. PASS radio will launch online in August and intends to migrate to FM radio during September-October. Thereafter, broadcasting will continue online.
To secure a FM broadcast license PASS needs your support. We need to convince the authorities at ICASA that Cape Town needs, wants and will support this radio station. Please help us bring back free-format radio to the city airwaves by adding your name to a letter of support.
Click here to sign the petition [+]
For more information please contact: info@africacentre.net
or +27 21 881 3116.
