The Festival Street Parades, as always, provided a colourful and energetic close to Festival 2015 last Saturday and Sunday. Local and international performers took to the streets of Joza and the town centre and entertained the crowds who lined the route.
The Festival Street Parades, as always, provided a colourful and energetic close to Festival 2015 last Saturday and Sunday. Local and international performers took to the streets of Joza and the town centre and entertained the crowds who lined the route.
This year's theme was Trans Formations/Trans Actions and musicians, dancers, puppeteers and stilt-walkers – many involved in the skills development initiatives offered by the National Arts Festival – strutted their stuff. Director Gareth Walwyn said that he was happy with the result – especially when it came to logistics.
"This year's parade was a major success. We had absolutely seamless collaboration from our city services, notably the traffic department, who worked with the National Arts Festival's technical team to provide a safe and well-thought-out route."
The parade team consisted of Gareth Walwyn (director), Kay Mosiane (manager), Kathleen Sawyer (art director) and Shiloh Marsh (co-ordinator) and it was produced by Access Music Project.
International artists included the Guandong Puppet Theatre troup from China, an SA-UK group called Remix and volunteers from ICS Latitude who were involved in many of the puppet performances.
Gareth points out that idea for the parade came initially from Festival Artistic Director Ismail Mahomed, who wanted to create an event which truly belongs to people living in Grahamstown.
"The final staged performance at the Drostdy lawns was a showcase of some excellent material devised, produced and presented by our own home-grown talent.
The parade is celebration of the creative people living in the creative capital, with the massive staging and presentation only possible with the full support of the Arts Festival."
Participant, Vuyo Booi from Sakhuluntu Cultural Group said it was good to take the spirit of the festival out into the community and to how people appreciated the parade.
"It's important that we share the festival in this way so that people can see the vibration of the festival.
On Saturday I noticed people on the streets even before the parade was starting and you could see they were waiting for it.
On Sunday we saw the audience all the way from Beafort Street to the Drostdy Lawns and it gives me hope to see that people are with us." He adds that there is room for it to grow.
"I think we need to try to develop the parade more – engaging more artists to come and participate."
The idea that even more can be done is one that Gareth Walwyn wholeheartedly endorses and he wants to get the message out that, next year, he'd like to see even more local involvement.
"As the director, I would like to challenge the communities of Grahamstown to be even more involved.
If this event is to become a real feature of the annual calendar, we need groups from the community to come forward with their own ideas, with their own presentations ready to go without needing our involvement in the creative and logistic development.
If you look at other significant parades, such as the Cape Town minstrel's carnival, or indeed the biggest parade in the world, the Brasilian Samba Carnaval, you will see that the communities produce their own content and the parade organisers are thereby able to create a truly magnificent show out of the combination.
Where were the schools, the university, local businesses, artisans, producers, lawyers and so on?
This event provides the most incredible opportunity for people of every background to collaborate creatively, but they have to come forward to do so."
