Programme Director
The Deputy Mayor of the Ethekwini Municipality, Councillor Lugie Naidoo
The Head of the MTN SA Foundation, Ms Eunice Maluleke
The President of the of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) SA Gallery, Mr George Phorne
The Chief Executive Officer of the KZN-SA Gallery, Mr. Trevor Moore
Our artists and judges
Honoured guests
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you for affording us the opportunity to address the 2010 MTN New Contemporaries Award ceremony. We are indeed humbled by the invitation to join all of you this evening for one of our country’s most prestigious events in the arts calendar.
This event is taking place during Heritage Month in our country.
Heritage Month, presents an opportunity to us as a nation to celebrate our rich and diverse cultural heritage.
It is also an opportunity to reaffirm once more that; what unites us far outweighs that which divides us.
It is a time to celebrate the profound power of our cultural heritage to help in the renewal of our society and to promote patriotism.
This year, we are celebrating Heritage Month under the theme: “Celebrating South Africa’s Living Human Treasures - the custodians of our Intangible Cultural Heritage.”
Guided by this theme; throughout this month, we celebrate those individuals who live among us in our communities, and are the custodians of our indigenous knowledge, expressions, customs, traditions and skills that we regard as part of our heritage.
Largely unnoticed and their work not recognised, these individuals play an important role in preserving our rich cultural heritage, ensuring that it is passed on from one generation to another.
We are therefore encouraged that one of the stated objectives of the MTN New Contemporaries Award, is to contribute to the preservation of our country’s rich cultural and artistic heritage.
We applaud the MTN Foundation, for sharing our vision as the Department of Arts and Culture, that of preserving our heritage for posterity.
We also applaud you for using this Award to identify and promote young artists who have not yet had the opportunity to gain appropriate exposure.
Through this award, you are also providing opportunities for skills development among our young artists.
By investing in skills development among young people, you are making a worthy investment in the future of our country.
We say this because; the youth are the future of our country!
Programme Director, in order to strengthen existing efforts to promote skills development especially among young people in the creative industries, the Department of Arts and Culture, is finalising a concept document towards the establishment of a National Skills Academy for the Arts. We envisage that the National Skills Academy will become a “Centre of Excellence” whose purpose is to fine tune the abundant talent that many of our young artists have.
This will ensure that our artists become the best at what they do, and that they can compete with the best in the world.
We look forward to working with the private sector to ensure the success of this important initiative.
In particular, we are looking up to all those companies that have already seen the value of investing in the abundant artistic talent of our young people, to join us in this initiative.
This we say fully aware that, working together we can do more to increase the pool of young people with the necessary skills to sustain the growth and development of our creative industries.
Equally important is that, these young people will ensure the preservation of our country’s rich and diverse heritage.
I now take this opportunity to congratulate this year’s finalists for the MTN New Contemporaries Award.
All of you have worked hard to reach this stage. All of you are extremely talented and I have no doubt that from here on, your careers in the arts will grow from strength to strength. We look forward to being inspired by the products of your artistic talents.
Indeed, we look forward to interacting with you in the near future as the next generation of leaders in contemporary arts scene.
Congratulations to the winner of this year’s award. There is no doubt that this award is well deserved.
Thank you.
Source: Department of Arts and Culture
