MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Maybe, Hoping and Praying…

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Dear MyPE

I hear the historic Grand Hotel is sadly closing.

How about handing this building over to our Metro artists, if possible, before it might get stripped & vandalised as well?

We desperately need a place of our own, in central, in a hub & buzz of activities – where more people, visitors, art collectors & collectors, will get to know & to support us.

This plight was shared with me by one our local artists, Ricardo Swanepoel:

“We need a central place for artists in PE. Like Capitol.

Where we can stockpile equipment and materials for struggling artists in the metro.

Somewhere we can call home.

Where we can workshop,exhibit, teach, collaborate and sell works.

The MBDA is renovating so many of the old buildings in the city and I’m sure we can find space somewhere.

City father’s can pay our rent.

The artist fraternity needs to come on board in funding such an initiative.

Many artist, like myself are caught up in domestic and other situations that render art to a backburner controlled by time and availability of Money.

To call a spade, a spade.

It can serve as a hub for creativity and a lifeline to strugglers who have to abandon art for mundane jobs to put food on the table.

Most people would give you a loaf of bread without batting an eye, but R60 for the cheapest tube of Acrylic and the game changes completely.

Artist also need access to market and training on matters like money and marketing.

We need such a space.

I would champion it but am also one of said strugglers that have to forfeit expression to chase income for my kids and the roof over my head.

These are our realities as artists in Mandela bay.”

Best regards

Annette

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.