The 2016 Puku Story Festival is due to take place in Grahamstown from 18 – 20 February.
The 2016 Puku Story Festival is due to take place in Grahamstown from 18 – 20 February.
Following the success of last year's format, the event will kick off with a series of pre-festival schools roadshows and community engagement sessions, before the three-day festival programme is officially launched.
The programme includes a series of storytelling and theatre performances as well as book launches and an exhibition for publishers, authors and literacy and education projects that will run throughout.
This year’s festival theme – “Zemk’iinkomo Magwalandini” – is an isiXhosa expression that is difficult to translate into English but means something close to “preserve your heritage”. In this case it refers to culture, language and traditions but also it can apply to the natural environment.
The expression is seen as a powerful rallying cry in isiXhosa, and is taken very seriously – which is why we chose it and we hope it will give momentum to the creation of environment-themed content aimed at children and presented on multiple platforms.
The Festival's headline sponsor is the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) – an organisation that creates incomes from recycling used tyres.
The core of the 2016 programme will be a 'festschrift' (a book honoring a respected person, often an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime) on the work of Dr Sindiwe Magona – whose work incorporates severay genres including folk tales, short story, poetry, memoir, biography, autobiography and fiction.
Her best-known book, "Mother to Mother", is now a prescribed English set book for Grade 10 so we hope learners attending the Festival will benefit from that. Thembi Mtshali’s award-winning stage adaptation of "Mother to Mother" will be the focus of the theatre section of the programme, demonstrating the relationship between text and performance.
Although "Mother to Mother" is currently only available in English, the play will be performed in isiXhosa at the festival.
To provide increased focus on the environmental theme, there will be an environmental literacy workshop, sponsored by the Swiss Embassy. Plus the extremely popular iimbongi workshop will be repeated.
The inaugural Puku Story Festival took place in September 2013 to coincide with International Literacy Day and was implemented in partnership with the National Arts Festival and Rhodes University School of Languages: African Language Studies' Section. This first Festival successfully created a platform for parents, teachers, librarians and young people to network amongst themselves and with writers, storytellers and language and literacy practitioners.
The second Puku Story Festival followed in February 2014 and coincided with International Mother Language Day on 21 February. The theme of the festival was Celebrating Our Legacy in recognition of the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy, the ongoing reflection on the life of Nelson Mandela as well as the 40th anniversary of the National Arts Festival.
The third Puku Story Festival held in February 2015 was based on the developed theme of Celebrating Our Legacy and Inventing Our Future. The success of this festival, which was attended by well over 1 000 people, surpassed all expectations and prompted unanimous agreement amongst all partners that these festivals must become an annual event.
The second and third Puku Story Festivals would not have been possible without the investment of REDISA.
It is difficult to overstate the value of this investment because unlike other sponsorships, it has not just been financial. It has included capacity-building as well as something intangible but equally valuable and that is moral support and commitment.
For more details on this year's festival, go to www.puku.co.za
*Ziyanda Gysman is a founder member and director of the Puku Story Festival.
