Building cultural capital: transforming the South African National Arts Festival

Snowball, J.D.; Willis, K.G.

AfricaBib

bibliographic database
Line

New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article

Leiden University catalogue

WorldCat

Title:	Building cultural capital: transforming the South African National Arts Festival
Authors:	Snowball, J.D. Willis, K.G.
Year:	2006
Periodical:	South African Journal of Economics
Volume:	74
Issue:	1
Pages:	20-33
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	festivals cultural policy arts
External link:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2006.00046.x/pdf
Abstract:	The Grahamstown National Arts Festival (NAF) is not only South Africa's oldest Arts festival, covering the politically and economically turbulent apartheid to democracy time period, but it is also the most diverse in terms both of the shows on offer and the audience who attend. It has grown from its beginning in 1974, when 60 events were presented, to 450 events in 2004. In making decisions about what sort of shows the festival should be including, it is important to find out what festival audiences think of proposed changes before they occur. One way to do this is to use the choice experiment methodology to examine what the effects of varying festival attributes would be. Using a historical account of the changing role of the NAF in South Africa's history, this paper shows that culture, expressed through the arts, can play an important developmental role in the transition from one sociopolitical era to another. It also shows how crucial decisions on what sort of art should be included can be informed by a choice experiment conducted at the 2004 NAF. The paper concludes that choice experiments are an ideal way to examine the likely effects of festival attribute changes to a wide variety of socioeconomic groups before they are made, both in terms of the marginal rate of substitution between attributes and in examining the market acceptability of proposed changes. Bibliogr., note, sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]