From a photography exhibition to an art residency, the SA-UK 2014 and 2015 Seasons promises a variety of mouth-watering cultural exchange, writes Stefanie Jason.
“This is a good news story,” poet and activist Lebo Mashile proclaimed at the launch of the artists and/or organisations chosen to take part in the SA-UK Seasons 2014 and 2015. “In the era of Eskom and Sona, and all these other things that are going on in our public lives, this is a story of how government is doing something right,” she said.
READ: Full list of projects chosen by the SA-UK Seasons’s joint organising committee
Mashile was speaking at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on Friday to an audience of art practitioners, dignitaries and the media at the announcement of about 40 projects chosen to be part of the 2015 joint artistic programmes between South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Short of Arts Minister Nathi Mthethwa, dignitaries at the event included the likes of deputy director general of the department of arts and culture Maseapo Kganedi and Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy to South Africa Baroness Patricia Scotland.
“The projects [chosen by SA-UK Seasons] … serve to challenge and update perceptions of contemporary culture and creativity in both countries,” said Bongani Tembe, commissioner general of SA-UK Seasons.
Tembe was speaking at the launch ahead of the weekend performances and SA-UK Seasons initiatives: jazz singer Judith Sephuma at the Jazz Café in Camden, London, legendary music group Mango Groove at London’s Apollo Hammersmith and award-winning a capella trio The Soil, who performed at Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II, among others.
SA-UK Seasons is a project between the South African department of arts and culture and the British Council and, according to the Seasons, is a multifaceted collaboration between South Africa and the United Kingdom “with a particular focus on artistic and creative capacity-building and relationship development intended to raise cultural relations between the two countries”.
Visit the SA-UK Seasons website for more information
Full report by Stefanie Jason see Mail & Guardian
PHOTO CREDIT: Photography collective I See A Different are one of about 40 projects selected for the latest SA-UK Seasons joint programme. (Supplied).
