The focus of this Research Report is an evaluation of the DAC MGE funded Festivals and Events category.
The South African Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) embarked on a strategy to reposition the arts, culture and heritage sector to address social cohesion, creation of sustainable jobs and ensuring social and economic development. The Mzansi Golden Economy (MGE) was launched in 2011 to unlock the South African cultural economy by making strategic investments to optimise the economic benefit of the Arts and to enhance the sector’s global competitiveness. An evaluation of the sub-categories of the cultural events that receive funding as part of the MGE programme was conducted, including Festivals and Events, the focus of this second report. The DAC MGE Festivals and Events Grant Programme aims to strengthen and grow the arts, culture and heritage sector in South Africa. It aims to assist local organisations in hosting arts and cultural events in communities, and by providing more opportunities for arts organisations and artists to perform and showcase their work.
The evaluation of the Festivals and Events comprised a period of three funding cycles (2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017). The Festivals and Events received different levels of funding and ranged from R30 000 to R4 000 000 for the last year in which DAC MGE funding was received. Thus, the funding is an annual estimation. They were hosted in all nine provinces with the most dominant provinces being Gauteng (34.6%), Limpopo (14.5%), KwaZulu-Natal (13.8%) and Western Cape (11.2%).
The MGE Festivals and Events Grant has assisted new organisers in the cultural event/ activity arena with 60% planning the event for three years or less. This suggests that the DAC MGE is creating opportunities for more cultural events/ activities to be held in South Africa, contributing to the objective of increasing and diversifying cultural offerings. Furthermore, opportunities are being created to expose more organisations and persons to conceptualise, plan and manage arts and cultural events/ activities which relates to capacity and skills development. With more events being supported, it further creates a platform for additional tourism products at a local level. Some of the organisers received funding for two years, thus the DAC MGE Festivals and Events Grant is trying to be more strategic in its approach to funding events/ festivals and exhibitions but at the same time creating an opportunity for new entrants.
The Festivals and Events displayed a range of different types of cultural genres and aspects including festivals, exhibitions, performances, workshops and training events which mainly targeted youth and schools. The different types, sizes and spatial/ geographical spread of the Festivals and Events is meeting the broader objective of contributing to increased diversity of cultural offerings. The DAC MGE funding has assisted in enhancing the quality of the event/activity, another objective of the Festivals and Events programme. However, it is unclear whether the funding has led to existing events and festivals to be upscaled since these events are still emerging.
A key objective of the DAC MGE programme is that Festivals and Events will increase the number of jobs and upskilling opportunities for arts and culture communities as well as the tourism sector. In terms of employment, those employed on a permanent basis who work directly with the DAC MGE funded event/ activity ranged from 2 to 58 persons with an average of 9.3. Furthermore, it is estimated that 1 423 permanent jobs are associated with the 153 DAC MGE funded Festivals and Events. This suggests that organising the DAC MGE funded Festivals and Events results in more permanently employed persons in the organisation which aligns to the DAC MGE objective of promoting job creation. The DAC MGE funded events are one of the main activities or the only activity the organisations are involved in. This underscores the importance of DAC MGE funding in promoting and supporting the diversity of cultural events/ activities in South Africa. The DAC MGE funding further supported, in many instances, small enterprises.
The Festivals and Events create many opportunities for temporary/ casual employment. If these events are sustained on an annual basis, the DAC MGE Festivals and Events will be able to contribute to job sustainability, which is as important as job creation. Most additional persons were employed on a temporary/ casual basis for a day, more than a day to a week, more than a week to a month and more than a month. The findings further show that Festivals and Events contribute to building event management skills in the arts and cultural domain beyond the funded event thus enhancing skills development in the creative and cultural sector which is a key objective of the DAC MGE programme.
A concern was a lack of disaggregated employment information by historical racial category and location of additional persons employed. In terms of gender disaggregation, no major differences were discernible which suggests that both women and men are being exposed to job opportunities in the cultural sector. Africans as the main historically disadvantaged group in South Africa are the key beneficiaries from the DAC MGE programme as intended. However, most of the employment is temporary/ casual and are generally lower paying jobs. These aspects continue to be a key challenge when examining job creation in the creative and cultural industry in addressing historical economic disadvantage and sustainable job creation. The results indicate that DAC MGE objectives of focusing on locally-based job creation and opportunities in the creative and cultural industry is evident. The majority of the events/ activities did not have work-integrated learning (WIL) or volunteers to provide assistance. This highlights that skills development in the arts, cultural and heritage sector can be improved with more opportunities being created. The results further reveal that mainly local service providers (on average, 65% of the service providers were locally-based in the town/ city/ municipality where the event was held) benefitted economically from the hosting of these festivals and events in alignment with DAC MGE objectives for local beneficiation. Additionally, Black South Africans are the key beneficiaries as service providers (on average, 70% of the service providers where Black South Africans) which indicates that economic benefits associated with DAC MGE Festivals and Events go beyond the direct benefits to organisers and employees.
Given the diversity of cultural events/ activities that are supported by the DAC MGE programme, it is evident that audiences throughout the country are being exposed to different types and genres of cultural events/ activities which is one of the objectives of the programme. However, due to a lack of disaggregated information on the attendees, it is not possible to examine audience diversity. Moreover, due to the lack of clarity on how attendee figures, especially for non-ticketed events, is being determined; the extent of the audience exposure cannot be quantitatively determined. The DAC MGE Festivals and Events Grant did, however, contribute to the objective to increase exposure to the creative and cultural sector as well as increase audience numbers due to many of the event/ activities being free or not having an entrance fee. In most of the cases the targeted audiences were locally-based as well.
Very few events/ activities are leveraging free media exposure or are monitoring media coverage of the Festivals and Events. Thus, media tracking needs to be improved in order to achieve the DAC MGE goal of increasing audience and exposure that each production receives. In terms of sponsorship, the reliance on public funding, and DAC MGE funding in particular (on average, 83% of the total sponsorship was DAC MGE funding), is apparent. Without this funding it will be a challenge for many of these events/ activities to be sustained. Some organisers noted that the DAC MGE funding enabled fundraising from other potential sponsors which suggests that DAC MGE funding is important in attempts to leverage additional sponsorships. The lack of financial data is of concern given the amount of DAC MGE funding that is provided to these event organisers. The main problems identified related to funding (including delays in the release of DAC MGE funding) and was also the main concern in relation to event sustainability.
