Conference of the Creatives

Poster designed By Chantelle Louwrens

 

Why I Go

 

 

When you make a living from conceiving and producing multimedia communications for corporates, it's important that you make sure you're staying up to date with the latest and greatest creative practitioners in the industry. 

Unfortunately we don't have many opportunities to do this in South Africa, but we do have at least three - the Loeries, the Design Indaba, and the Grahamstown Festival.

The Grahamstown Festival might not seem like the most obvious choice at first glance, but as the nation's premier arts festival it attracts the best and brightest writers, directors, actors, musicians, comedians, performers and producers in the land.

Best of all - all of these people are staging their own work.

They are putting their own creative reputations on the line.

They are putting massive amounts of their own time, and their own money into their own productions.

They are subjecting themselves and their work to the judgement - not of a client with a fixed budget and a captive audience - but to the harshest of all critics - the fee paying public.

This is exactly how and why these are the people that are able to produce creative work of the highest quality and the utmost integrity in the corporate world. They know what it means to be mediocre, and to be good, and to be great in the real world. They know the difference because they have experienced them first hand, at their own expense.

As a creative director in a leading experiential agency like Mann Made Media, I am proud to count myself among this creative citizenry. I happy to put my own work - 'Sunday Morning' with fellow professionals, Jenine Collocott and James Cunningham, and 'The Handover' with the legendary Lionel Newton - on the open marketplace of public consumption.  I am also ready to let the chips [and the chirps!] fall as they may.

For it is here, in the many different venues of the Grahamstown Festival, where you can enjoy the kind of networking, indulge in the kinds of conversations, and experience the kind of inspirations that we dream of designing for our clients and their audiences in our corporate work.

For me and my tribe then, the Grahamstown Festival is more than a wonderful opportunity to enjoy what some would call a 'creative holiday' - it is what my friend and creative collaborator James Cunningham calls 'our conference'.

This is why I am taking my own work to the Festival, and that is why my company is sending me to add my voice and lend my ear to that extended inspirational conversation over the next few days - because it's my job to do my personal best, and my it's my pleasure to learn from the professional rest.

I'll keep you posted.