Barbara Ludman
27 May 2003
South Africa’s two biggest cities have been honoured for their sponsorship of the arts: Johannesburg for fine art and Cape Town for music.
The awards came from Business Day, a national newspaper, and Business and Arts South Africa (Basa), comprised of nearly 100 corporate members, from law firms to bookshops, mining houses to banks.
At the sixth annual Basa awards, recognising businesses that support the arts, Cape Town’s Economic Development and Tourism Directorate was praised for its sponsorship of The Aqua Opera – performances by Cape Town Opera on the water, with Table Mountain as a backdrop. This newest venture followed opera performances at the V&A Waterfront and in Guguletu township.
“Premised on the belief that events are the modern-day image builders of cities,” read the citation, “rendering Cape Town a better place to visit, to live in, to work in and to invest, the partnership – which has already developed new audiences across the board – will continue.”
Art for urban regeneration
Johannesburg was singled out for its campaign to bring art into the inner city. The citation for the Chairman’s Premier Award praised the city for its “innovative and imaginative sponsorship programme designed to spur urban regeneration and draw people back into the city centre”.
The Johannesburg Art City competition in 2002 displayed greatly enlarged versions of art works on the sides of a range of buildings. Half the works were chosen from among artists who had had a show in the past three years, and the other half came from corporate art collections.
Another art-in-the-city project was also honoured by Basa, which gave its award for Best Use of a Commission of New Art to the cellphone company, Cell C, for its project entitled C for the City. Cell C commissioned 35 artists, most of them living and working in the city, to produce artwork with a “C” and “for the city” somewhere in the piece. These works were enlarged and, like Art City, with which this project dovetailed, displayed on buildings in the inner city.
Basa honoured both projects in its citation for Johannesburg Art City, noting that they had “transformed the City of Johannesburg into a huge art gallery, attracting local, national and international attention … This intervention represents an unusual affirmation of the importance of arts and culture to the life of a city; not only has this awakened a new sense of energy and dynamism in the public and private sector, it has also taken South African contemporary art into the public arena.”
Growth in arts sponsorship
Arts and arts sponsorship are a growth industry across the country – especially in music and fine art, judging by the projects that received Basa awards.
Standard Bank won in the International Sponsorship category for staging an exhibition entitled The Magical Universe of Joan Miro, in collaboration with the French Institute of South Africa.
But music was the big winner.
De Beers was honoured for its sponsorship of the Orchestra Rave, an annual massed youth orchestra event held in Johannesburg. The Rave, notes the citation, “successfully brings together young people from all backgrounds, cultures and creed through their music … 400 young musicians from different communities and music institutions in massed concerts”.
Sanlam has for years run a national competition for primary school musicians, and this won the Long Term Development award.
The Gateway Theatre of Shopping in Durban won the First Time Sponsor award for its launch of the Gateway Philharmonic Orchestra – 55 young musicians drawn from the Durban City Orchestra who perform regularly at the shopping centre.
And Classicfm won the Media Sponsorship award for broadcasting concerts of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and for “an extensive and imaginative media campaign” which was “designed to amuse and catch the public’s attention and thus change the traditional perception of classical music concerts”.
Inspiring musicians
It was not only classical music that took the awards. The Coca-Cola South and East Africa Division was honoured for its Strategic Sponsorship, in collaboration with SABC3, of the Coca-Cola Popstars project – “targeting the youth market,” the citation read, “with the focus on building dreams, not breaking them. Some 6 000 young aspirant singers took part, and countless individual entrants have derived small to large scale career opportunities as a direct result of this platform”.
And Volkswagen SA was another winner, for sponsoring David Kramer’s Karoo Kitaar Blues, featuring traditional musicians from the Northern Cape. The show “brought unrecognised indigenous musicians and their music into the pubic arena and excited unprecedented interest countrywide”, the citation read.
Nor was it only big business that won the big prizes. The equipment company company Production Projects won the Sponsorship in Kind award for providing technical backup to the Fantastic Flying Fish Dance Company.
And a restaurant in Pretoria, the Ristorante Ritrovo, was cited for its “adopt an artist scheme”, wherein a member of the Black Tie Ensemble, a troupe of young operatic singers, is “adopted” for a year, enabling the artist to continue training. So far, the training of 11 singers has been sponsored by customers of the restaurant.
