M & E KDI REPORT PUBLIC ART

Overview

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 the Public Arts programme the focus of this fourth report.

The DAC MGE Public Arts Programme aims to assist local organisations (in the city, town or municipality where the event/ activity is held) in the Public Arts environment by providing more opportunities for creative arts practitioners, organisations and government to showcase creativity in public spaces. The Public Arts Development Programme (PADP) is intended to enable the creative arts sector to stabilise and consolidate, providing access to work and experience, build capacity/ transfer skills and create linkages to support infrastructure, enhance quality of life and support heritage and tourism. In the long-term, it aims to also promote partnerships to reduce dependency on government’s financial assistance, create sustainability of the creative arts sector, including the culture and heritage sector. The PADP further aims to encourage professional planning and accountability by the sector as well as to stimulate local economic activities.

The evaluation of Public Arts events/ activities comprised a period of three funding cycles (2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017). These events/ activities received a wide range of funding, from R25 000 to R1 500 000 with an average of R296 333 for the last year in which DAC MGE funding was received. Thus, the funding is an annual estimation. Public Arts were hosted in all nine provinces with the most dominant provinces being Gauteng (34.6%), Limpopo (14.5%), KwaZuluNatal (13.8%) and Western Cape (11.2%). The Public Arts events/ activities focused primarily on visual arts and exhibitions displayed in public spaces, targeting mainly schools.

The findings show that different types, sizes and spatial/ geographical spread of the Public Arts events/ activities assist with meeting the broader DAC MGE objective of contributing to increased diversity of cultural offerings. However, it is unclear whether the funding has led to existing Public Arts events/ activities to be upscaled in communities which is one of the key objectives of the PAPD. Organisers noted how the DAC MGE funding has permitted them to improve the quality of the event/ activity thus addressing the objective to enhance quality of productions.

An estimated 240 permanent jobs are associated with the DAC MGE Public Arts programme, specifically in developing and promoting arts, culture and heritage skills beyond that of the event/activity being sponsored. The PADP also creates opportunities for additional employment, with most being employed on a temporary/ casual basis for a week, month and mainly more than a month, however, disaggregated information by gender, historical racial category and location of additional persons employed was not readily available. Nevertheless the results indicate that both women and men, with Africans as the main historically disadvantaged group in South Africa is the key beneficiary from the DAC MGE programme as intended. Furthermore the DAC MGE objectives of focusing on locally-based job creation and opportunities in the creative and cultural industry is evident, thus supporting livelihoods as intended by the DAC MGE. However, temporary/ casual employment in lower paying jobs continues to be a challenge when examining job creation in the creative and cultural industry in addressing historical economic disadvantage and sustainable job creation as the PADP intends to focus on. Additional persons employed were being exposed to a range of different types of skills such as artist/ participant management which more directly relates to the creative and cultural industries which align to the skills development aspirations of PADP. Many of the Public Arts events/ activities also had volunteer programmes and both staff and/ or volunteers received training, thus underscoring the importance of skills development in the creative arts sector, and among the youth in particular. These are key objectives of the MGE programme. In terms of local beneficiation, mainly local service providers and stallholders benefitted economically from the hosting of the events/ activities, in alignment with DAC MGE objectives, thus demonstrating that DAC MGE funded events/ activities go beyond the direct benefits to organisers and employees.

While the diversity of the events/ activities supported by DAC MGE funding is evident, it was not possible to examine audience diversity and brings into question whether the extent of the audience exposure can be quantitatively determined due to a lack of disaggregated data and the methods used to estimate attendance. Although most of the media exposure leveraged was locally based, media tracking needs to be improved to achieve the DAC MGE goal of increasing the audience and exposure that each event/ activity receives.

In terms of Public Arts events/ activities’ sustainability, two-thirds (66.7%) were generally unable to secure additional sponsorship thus demonstrating the heavy reliance on public funds, specifically DAC MGE funding. It is of concern that many of the organisations receiving DAC MGE funding for Public Art could not provide the required financial information. Event sustainability concerns related mainly to securing funding. The value/ advantage of the DAC MGE funded event/ activity focused on profiling/ showcasing the arts, culture and heritage sector (especially visual arts) which links directly to the DAC MGE objectives. Additionally, economic development, tourism and beautification of public spaces as envisioned by the PADP were further highlighted.