Happy 8th Anniversary to the Feast of the Clowns hosted by the Tshwane leadership Foundation (TLF), in collaboration with inner-city churches, entrepreneurs, Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, development organizations, and Gods will. The Feast of the Clowns has steadily grown over the years from a street event to a week long community arts festival, which ran from 11 August to 17 this year.
It is the biggest inner-city community arts festival that takes place annually at Burgers Park in Pretoria Central. The Feast of the Clowns “Feast” was founded on the following premise: Celebration, Arts and Justice. The Feast is a medley of activities catering for families and individuals, celebrating the inner city’s cosmopolitan population whilst building harmony and correlation.
Workshops are held through out the week, a march through the city led by clowns and bikers, targeting urban social issues and through its festivities. The Feast showcases upstart artists alongside prominent artists, raises awareness to social challenges affecting urban communities, and creates a mood of week long peace, thriving to make the arts accessible to disadvantaged and excluded groups.
A brief look at the Feast of the Clowns program: featuring a wide genre of local talent in performing arts across the age spectrum. The main festival hosted at least 65 artists in and around the Burgers Park, from 11am till 8pm, free entry. Featured top acts such as Kabelo and Karen Zoid. Doxa – An amalgamated flair of musical performances to suite an array of tastes. Coke Truck – Live entertainment on Burgers Park Lane with song and dance. Street Theatre – A selected few interesting performances to tantalize. Band Stand (in the park) – a lively line of popular artists from the scene. Fourth Stage (in the Park) – A medley and of sound and voice in calm of the park.. Other performances during week included 3 plays at the State Theatre.
And my friend, my son Ren and I went to the Feast on the 17th, Sunday. A drive into Visage Street after Nelson Mandela Street in the Pretoria Central from Lynwood Road, which becomes Kotze Street and Jorissen Street through Sunnyside. After Van Der Walt Street along the drive Andries Street follows in which you take a left and Burgers Park is about 50m ahead. We traveled the same way, and wow!, we spot a parking across the right hand side of Andries Street next to the car wash. It was quite a mission to parallel park on this busy street. Metro Police, private cars and buses are all stopped out along the road. There are various sounds that emanate from the park and it is a hive of activity. The park is bright, colorful and vibrant.
The events are all varied and interesting. We walked through a line of a group of bikers with Harleys parked on left side of Burges Park Lane in front of the Methodist Church and the bikes with drop handles on the right. Alas I did not get a picture… Later I learnt from Stephan De Beer of the TLF that the bikers had led the march at 10:00 in the morning.
In the park we saw ponies and Ren was not yet ready for a pony ride. So we just watched the others enjoy the rides. We move out of the park after meeting Isabel, who was with a 15 kids from her block of flats. We went into the street walked down to Burgers Park house. Yippie! Clown Stephan is one of the clowns and Wilna was unrecognizable in her clown outfit! I mention to Stephan if he recalls I was supposed to make stone soup for the Feast this year - the event manager had taken my initial proposal as a joke and omitted the stone soup from the program, as she had never heard of this kind of soup/food ever in her life. Also I would have prepared the miracle stone soup that would be a great part of the festival. You may look forward to stone soup being part of next year’s food program!
The mood and spirits are uplifted and appropriate for the delivery of the initiative that carries a ray of hope for the City of Tshwane!