Art in the context of Christian faith

by Wendy Ngcobo and Cindy Mthembu

“Nobody who comes to Grahamstown has to ask for directions to the Cathedral”.

This was the highlighting at this year’s spirit Fest .The Cathedral is one of the ancient buildings in Grahamstown. Spirit Fest is an item presented at the Grahamstown National Festival of the Arts. This is art in the context of Christian faith and items such as gospel music, lectures, worship and dance are offered.

 One of the highlights this year was a book Grahamstown Cathedral: A Guide and Short History by Charles Gould that was launched. Jeanette Eve introduced the new guide which is a continuation of the older guide. “I dedicated myself to the rewriting of this guide” said Eve explaining the hard work she did putting together the second guide. She thanked everyone including Dean Andrew Hunter who played a fundamental role in bringing the book to life.

She has been sceptical at first as she already had many projects that she was doing but was happy and excited about the finished product. Local is Lekker “, she said .She emphasised  that she was happy to say that this book was written ,updated and now released in Grahamstown . Eve gave a vote of thanks to the Cory library for preserving a lot of the archives about the Cathedral.

She described this as a part of Spirit Fest and a beautiful work of art. This book is being updated the first having been updated in 1927 ,”It will help regular worshippers as well as visitors” said Eve. It was done as the Cathedral has seen so much, even those who think they know the Cathedral will find some things that are new in this guide.

               

With many people coming to Fest, Christians who want to worship and ask God for guidance and people from other religion that are interested in finding out or just want to listen to gospel music can come to this historical and sacred place.

WE GET THE MESSAGE

There we are, hitch-hiking, trying to find a way to the MONUMENT, way up the hill in RU, it is windy and freezing cold. Nokuthula and I are going to computicket to find out about the ticket sales for the Festival. You must wonder how that went. Lol...a computicket employee told us they are "NOT allowed to talk to the media" and sent us to the Festival offices. Makes you wonder: Are WE, the media taken as the 'enemy'? OR are they just NOT authorised to speak to us?

Down the monument we went, and yes we found the Fest Office. We talked to the CEO, Tony Lankester,curiously asking him about the Festival ticket sales. He politely told us they cannot give us that kind of information YET, he can only distribute it halfway through the Festival...REASON BEING: Either way the media can negatively affect the ticket sales. How? You may ask yourself. Oh well, If the ticket sales are sky rocketing and we publish that they fear the sales may drop. Again, if the ticket are not selling and we publish that, they fear that people may lose interest and consider the Fest borring and decide not to come.

Well, we guess we are going to have to wait just a little bit more to find out more about the ticket sales. Makes you really wonder thou: HOW ARE THE TICKET SALES GOING?

Keep wondering...maybe, just maybe we might get the answer for you in NO TIME at all.

By Sesethu Malgas

FJP and HA are legendary via Twitter: An Alumni writes

I wrote a few weeks how bad i felt when I didn't see any new posts on the blog for the past few months and if you read it, you'd know how I felt. Anyway, thanks to Sim for being as active as ever, with one post a month! Atleast we are still getiing a lil bit of traffic.

Welcome to the new FJP's! I'm sure that you, like me, were excited when you got the call that told you that you're one of a few journalism students in the country who can boast of being part of the Future Journalists Programme. Well Done! Use this opportunity as well as you can and trust me, you'll be a success. I am.

Anyway I really wanted to be at Highway Africa this year,  I even enquired about the prices and everything, but alas, due to the World Cup (which I am so sick of... add Zakumi to the picture and I gag) I couldn't get leave, therefore I couldn't exactly come to G'Town for the conference. However not all is lost! Thanks to a little nifty thing called Twitter ( btw you can follow me- Buhlebonga) I can follow the whole conference! From who opened the conference, to who said what and what people wore to the Awards last night (thanks Lebo). :-)

So its great having people tweeting about the conference. It makes me feel like I'm there and hopefully I will get to learn something out of this year's HA. Oh btw, what is the theme this year? *hides*

PIC: 2008 FJP's at the 2008 Highway Africa Conference

FJP REUNION? Yes, please!

I miss this blog. Its one of the first outlets that I had to use to get published and as I watch it being in active, I become sad as this was such a great platform for young writers to get their thoughts, writings and talent to the world.

I miss the Future Journalists Programme. Its been two years and I remember that two years ago this time we were all prepared and super amped for the upcoming challenge that was the Arts Festival and seeing Grahamstown coming alive. Not only did I shock myself by writing my first tongue-in-cheek article and also interviewing Xolela Mangcu, who turned out to be a nightmare, very rude and unkind to young journalists, but I stood my ground and got the response I needed.

I miss YOU guys. We may chat on Facebook, twitter and everything, but you all made a HUGE impact on my life and I would do anything to see you guys. What I'm saying really is how about we have an FJP reunion, just so we can see where we are now, whether we all have jobs, and share how FJP made our lives better or improved our chances of being accepted in the industry?

So I'm posing a request to everyone who is FJP alumni? Can we meet up soon and reminisce about the good times that we had as FJP's? I know that FJP helped ME secure the job I have now and so interested was my editor about it, I spent a good 15 minutes talking about it, mind you this was on an impromptu interview on my graduation day!

Me and colleague, Charmel Bowman

 So how about it Boss Lady? Can Highway Africa and Open Society pull it off???