May 23, 2003
By Jonews Reporter
THE City of Johannesburg was recognised this week for its campaign to bring art into the inner city.
Business and Arts South Africa (Basa) honoured the city with the Chairman's Premier Award for its "innovative and imaginative sponsorship programme designed to spur urban regeneration and draw people back into the city centre".
The Johannesburg Art City competition aimed to showcase the inner city as the hub and cultural centre of Africa's world-class city by displaying greatly enlarged versions of art works on the sides of a range of buildings. Half the works were chosen from among artists who had had a show in the past three years, and the other half came from corporate art collections.
The competition was organised by the City of Johannesburg, the Central Johannesburg Partnership, the Johannesburg Inner City Business Coalition, and the Johannesburg Development Agency, with support from Business and Arts South Africa and assistance from International Courier Brokers.
Another art-in-the-city project was also honoured by Basa, which gave its award for Best Use of a Commission of New Art to Cell C for its project C for the City. Cell C commissioned 35 artists, most of them living and working in the city, to produce artwork with a "C" and "for the city" somewhere in the piece. These works were enlarged and, like Art City, with which this project dovetailed, displayed on buildings in the inner city.
It was the second award for "C for the city", which also won an international prize for the project from the media monitor group Mediaedge:cia, beating out 70 other contenders from around the world.
Basa honoured both projects in its citation for Johannesburg Art City, noting that they had "transformed the City of Johannesburg into a huge art gallery, attracting local, national and international attention … This intervention represents an unusual affirmation of the importance of arts and culture to the life of a city; not only has this awakened a new sense of energy and dynamism in the public and private sector, it has also taken South African contemporary art into the public arena."
This week marked the sixth annual Basa awards, which honour businesses that support the arts. Hosts Mary Slack, the chairman, and Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, co-sponsor of the awards, handed framed, archive quality photographs by Jurgen Schadeberg to a range of winners.
De Beers was honoured for its sponsorship of the Orchestra Rave, an annual massed youth orchestra event held in Johannesburg. The Rave, notes the citation, "successfully brings together young people from all backgrounds, cultures and creed through their music … 400 young musicians from different communities and music institutions in massed concerts".
ClassicFM won the Media Sponsorship award for broadcasting concerts of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and for "an extensive and imaginative media campaign" which was "designed to amuse and catch the public's attention and thus change the traditional perception of classical music concerts".
Other winners included Gateway Theatre of Shopping in Durban for its sponsorship of the Gateway Philharmonic Orchestra; the City of Cape Town's economic development and tourism directorate for the waterborne Aqua Opera; Standard Bank for the Joan Miro exhibition, in collaboration with the French Institute; Sanlam for its National Music Competition; Volkswagen for sponsoring David Kramer's Karoo Kitaar Blues; Ristorante Ritrovo for The Black Tie Ensemble's "adopt-an-artist" scheme; the equipment company Production Projects for providing technical backup to the Fantastic Flying Fish Dance Company; and Coca-Cola South and East African Division for its sponsorship of the Popstars competition.
