M & E KDI REPORT TOURING VENTURES

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 Touring Ventures, the focus of this third report.

Touring Ventures was established to ensure that exhibitions, fairs, shows and performances are supported to tour domestically and internationally. Tours to remote areas are included to provide access for marginalised audiences and to sustain jobs. It is anticipated that this workstream will permit the Arts, Cultural and Heritage Sector to stabilise and consolidate, providing access to work and experience, capacity building and linkages to tourism. Furthermore, the long-term goal is to reduce dependency on financial assistance from government and insecurity in the Arts Cultural and Heritage Sector and to enhance professional planning and accountability.

The evaluation of the Tourism Ventures comprised a period of three funding cycles (2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016-2017). Touring Ventures received different levels of funding and ranged from R20 000 to R1 000 000 for the last year in which DAC MGE funding was received. Thus, the funding is an annual estimation. Although the spatial distribution could not be established for close to a third of the Touring Venture (34.4%), the rest of the events/ activities were hosted in all nine provinces with the most dominant province being Gauteng (28.9%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (7%), Northern Cape (6.3%) and Western Cape (6.3%).

The number of new entrants in organising events/ activities (60.5% organising the event/ activity for less than three years and 31.6% indicating a year) suggest that the DAC MGE is creating opportunities for more cultural events/ activities to be held in South Africa, contributing to the objective of supporting arts groupings and individual art practitioners, as well as building capacity and skills development.

While most Touring Ventures received funding for one year, it is of concern that some of the organisers/ individuals received funding for more than a year, which may be construed as a violation of the Terms and Conditions. In most instances individuals were supported, which aligns to the Touring Ventures programme of supporting individual artists, performers and exhibitors. The different types, sizes and spatial/ geographical spread of the Touring Ventures indicate that this programme is meeting the broader objective of contributing to increased diversity of cultural offerings in different parts of the country. Furthermore, many of the exhibitions/ performances were international (41%), exposing South African culture and arts to global audiences. Organisers also noted how the DAC MGE funding has permitted them to improve the quality of their performance and the experiential learning opportunities.

In terms of the number of persons permanently employed, the DAC MGE is critical for creating jobs in the cultural sector. With an average of 9 persons being employed on a permanent basis in the organisation who worked with the DAC MGE funded event/ activity and given that 128 events/ activities were funded by the Tourism Ventures programme, 1 152 permanent jobs are associated with this programme for the last year that funding was received. Many of the organisations/ individuals supported by the Touring Ventures are involved in other aspects that are directly contributing to cultural development in South Africa beyond that of the event/ activity being sponsored, thus contributing to one of the broader objectives of the DAC MGE programme.

Touring Ventures are also creating temporary/ casual employment, with Africans as the main historically disadvantaged group in South Africa being the key beneficiary from Touring Ventures component as 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 also evident. The temporary/ casual nature of employment in lower paying jobs 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. Artists and performers in particular struggle to secure long-term funding and job permanency. Nevertheless, Tourism Ventures are supporting livelihoods as intended by the DAC MGE, especially targeting historically disadvantaged groups and promoting job opportunities at the local level. Furthermore, the results indicate that additional persons employed (as well as staff and volunteers) were exposed to a range of different types of skills, which were mainly directly linked to arts and cultural aspects. This again reinforces the more direct impact of Touring Ventures in the development of artists and performers relating to the creative and cultural industries.

Given the diversity of cultural events/ activities that are supported by the DAC MGE programme, it is clear 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, audience development for the more locally-based events/ activities remains a challenge. Due to a lack of disaggregated information on the attendees, it is not possible to examine audience diversity. Additionally, with the exception of ticketed events, the manner in which the counts are being determined are not well understood or reliable. This brings into question whether the extent of the audience exposure can be quantitatively determined. However, as most of the Touring Ventures (73.7%) were free events, they provide individuals who cannot afford to pay for tickets the opportunity to experience cultural events/ activities, which are also linked to the DAC MGE objectives to increase exposure to the creative and cultural sector as well as increase audience numbers.

The Tourism Ventures programme contributed to mainly local (59%) and Black South Africans (63%) service providers benefitting economically from the hosting of the event/ activity as targeted by most of the organisations and in alignment with DAC MGE objectives. Thus, the broader goals of transformation are also evident. With minimal stallholder involvement, this can be a platform for local economic development opportunities and should be encouraged to create opportunities for small businesses in the areas in which these events/ activities are being held.

The dependence on public sponsors (with the average of DAC MGE funding being 78%) is of concern given that for all the event/ activities DAC MGE is already a main sponsor, and because of DAC’s long-term objective of reducing reliance on their funding this could be a concern. 

Almost all beneficiaries of the Touring Ventures (97.4%) were contributing to the DAC MGE objectives to promote social development and cohesion which further indicates that more could be done to enhance social cohesion in specific locations via their respective events/ activities. The main problems identified by beneficiaries related to funding, administrative challenges, support from relevant government departments and exposure for the event/ activity. The main aspects highlighted to address the challenges were DAC releasing funding in time and also the request to have longer term funding. Better communication with DAC was also recommended together with more funding allocation. Streamlining the application process, including the implementation of an online process, was also recommended.