Cultural exchange

The Swallows Partnership is an international cultural exchange initiative between the North East of England and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, through which principles of equality and mutual benefit inform an annually agreed programme of exchanges, teaching and training, commissions and productions, festivals, placements and residencies. The programme specifically involves cultural activity relating to economic and social regeneration, education, libraries and archives, and our next priority is leadership and management. After four years work in both countries, we can point to artistic and educational collaborations of real quality, but also to proven benefit to UK cultural managers.

Multilingual and multicultural
The genesis of the project was in my work in inner-city Johannesburg on projects that demonstrated the potential of the cultural sector to contribute to the priorities of the new South Africa. Since 2003, working in the Eastern Cape, I have become increasingly convinced of the artistic and cultural benefits to UK practice of engagement with current South African realities. There is a general point here about working internationally and in the developing world, but certain factors point to a very particular benefit in working in South Africa and, particularly, in the Eastern Cape. Demographically, South Africa has the same population as England, but in a landmass the size of France, Germany and Italy combined. More than 60% now live in urban areas; 80% of the population are black South Africans, 9% are of mixed heritage, 2% are Asian and 9% are white, evenly divided between those with Afrikaans as a first language and those with English. Economically, the country has a greater industrial infrastructure – and more cars, phones and autobanks – than the rest of Africa combined. It has the first world and third world within its borders, with both conspicuous wealth and deep poverty. Education, police and health services all face major challenges in extending an infrastructure designed for 10% of the population to the previously excluded 90%. There is an 11% HIV/AIDS infection rate and unemployment stands above 25%. Culturally, there are 11 official languages, with English almost universally spoken. Most black South Africans are able to speak four or five languages: it is a nation of multilingual multiculturalists. Perhaps most interestingly, it can be argued that – with the intervention of apartheid – this new country is beginning its post colonial journey 40 years late. The isolationist – as well as isolated – apartheid state restricted the impact of cultural globalisation and artificially promoted ‘homeland cultural identities’. These factors, plus the critical role that cultural identity played in the struggle for democracy, have produced a legacy of very strong indigenous cultures within the black communities. The culture of the privileged minority was meanwhile substantially frozen in a petit-bourgeois time-warp.

Regional challenges
The Eastern Cape is the heartland of the amaXhosa people and is arguably the Province facing the greatest challenges, in that it inherited two homelands as well as two major urban areas. It is also the most ‘English’ of the Provinces, with the British Government having cynically ‘planted’ 4,000 settlers here in 1820 to act as an unpaid buffer between the Cape Colony and the amaXhosa. The Provincial Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture has 1,200 staff spread across an area the size of the UK with a mission to promote the “spiritual, intellectual and material upliftment of the people”. Almost none of the front-line staff had any previous experience or training for the roles they now occupy. For a UK cultural manager, working on even the smallest arts project in South Africa calls on a range of skills and sensitivities – artistic, cultural, political, managerial, financial – that would only be required at the top of larger organisations in the UK.
The challenges are brought into sharp focus by the disparity in resources available. While Arts Council England invests over £10 per head per annum in the arts, the South African National Arts Council has only one Rand (currently worth around 6p) per head to spend. Working with far smaller budgets and, bluntly, in communities with far greater basic needs, requires the type of cultural management skills that can elude those who only work in richer countries. Perhaps the challenges and joys of working here are best summed up by Constitutional Court Justice, Albie Sachs, writing in October 2000: “We are in a strange position, no group is in charge; no section exercises cultural hegemony. The old establishment has lost its hauteur, but no confident and powerful new establishment has emerged to replace it. What we lack is confidence, organisation, focus and leadership. We have to learn to enjoy and be invigorated by the multiplicity of our cultural forms, and to get used to being as we are, even while we are changing.” It is a privilege as a cultural manager in late career to be able to play a small part in that process, and to make the experience available to others.

Activities for 2008
• The national UK tour of ELEPHANT, a co-production between Dodgy Clutch Theatre Company and The Market Theatre.
• A singer search in the Eastern Cape leading to a workshop with 16 singers and a residency in the UK for Amandla Esandla working with the ‘Sing Up’ programme out of The Sage Gateshead.
• A residency with TapRoot Theatre Company from Washington Arts Centre (Sunderland) with Shadows of Africa of Motherwell Arts Centre (Nelson Mandela Bay) resulting in a presentation at the SA National Arts Festival.
• A film workshop and investigation into a Provincial touring circuit for film exhibition as well as for the performing arts and training.
• Three UK chief librarians on tour through the Province with reciprocal visits from the Library Service and the new Eastern Cape Film Office.
• Indabas (gatherings/workshops) with delegates from both countries around the role of women in the arts and future performing arts policy for the Swallows Partnership.
• The imminent agreement of a special relationship between Tyne and Wear Museums and the Museums of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro following residency exchanges.
• Confirmation of funding for a major craft educational project with Artisancam and a literature/writing project with Grahamstown-based ‘Wordfest’