In the early 1980s, Ismail Mahomed came to the National Arts Festival to work as a producer and during the next 20 years, he returned as a writer and director, too.
In the early 1980s, Ismail Mahomed came to the National Arts Festival to work as a producer and during the next 20 years, he returned as a writer and director, too.
This year, 2011, will mark his third year as the director of the biggest multi-arts festival on the African continent – and his plans and dreams for Grahamstown and the festival are growing. Determined not to rest on the laurels of the festival's 39 years of success, Mahomed acknowledges that the arts are constantly changing.
"A whole new generation of audiences and artists is interacting with the arts in different ways," Mahomed says. In an age when young people can easily interact with art on Facebook and through other media, he wants to draw these audiences in, not only for leisure and entertainment, but also to expose audiences to art that "deals with who we are".
Ideally, the content of the shows engages with issues he believes people should be addressing in everyday life, such as disability. There are two dance productions featuring differently abled people, says Mahomed, and the Thinkfest programme will hold a panel discussion about disability in the arts.
He says the festival aims not only to give audiences high-quality work, but be to make it possible for them to sit at the end of that performance and engage with the content – "talk about it over coffee or dinner with neighbours and family".
In order to reach as many people as possible who make the pilgrimage to Grahamstown to bask in the arts, he says there will be free performances in public spaces for every day of the festival. Even with free shows and quality performances, Mahomed's quest is nowhere near complete. He says since he became director of the festival and a Grahamstown citizen, he is touched every day by the poverty that he sees here.
For him, the potential of the festival is to become a significant contributor in combating poverty in the area, and not merely a platform to celebrate and showcase artistic talent. With a number of programmes happening at the festival that aim to bring about positive and lasting change to the Grahamstown community (see "Taking talent to the next level", on Page 13), it appears that Mahomed is truly making the festival and the city a place where dreams can come true, and poverty does not have to be a part of everyday life.
