Tag Archives: Athol Fugard

Cape Town: City of Inspiration to work at addressing challenges in attracting business!

Cape Town Tourism has been conducting a series of ‘Brand Cape Town’ workshops since late last year, to share with its members as well as bloggers and other stakeholders what the outcome has been of a brainstorming session to find a positioning for Cape Town and what it can/should be, and to focus its marketing activities, not only from a Tourism perspective, but also from a general Business approach. 

Scanning the external environment, it identified threats such as the economic crisis, global urbanisation, and a greater consciousness about the impact of flying on the environment and climate change.  It also faced the reality that the seasonality in Cape Town’s tourism industry, unique to our city compared to others in the country, reflects that Cape Town does not have enough business tourism, being the result perhaps of too large a focus on Leisure Tourism in the past, and too little on attracting businesspersons to have their meetings, events and conferences in Cape Town.  Comparing the positioning of major world cities, e.g. Paris is Romance, New York is Energy, London is Tradition, it has historically been Beauty for Cape Town. Through its analysis, it was identified that the positioning of Inspiration is an overarching one that can position Cape Town beyond its more narrow tourism focus, to a broader one, reflecting the strengths of the City in respect of beauty, freedom, innovation, hope, creativity, diversity, dreams, ideas, and solutions to problems.

We have been critical about what we have seen in print about the Brand Cape Town workshops, but a completely different picture emerged in the presentation, which I was invited to attend last week, the last in the process of sharing the outcome of the brainstorm, and in obtaining input to the content of the branding and marketing debate.  To justify the positioning of Inspiration, Cape Town Tourism CEO Mariette du Toit-Helmbold took the attendees through the various ways in which Cape Town inspires its citizens, its local visitors, and its international tourists.  It was an inspiring presentation, and afterwards I felt proudly Capetonian in having learnt a lot more about the achievements of our city and its people.  The following were some of the Inspiration highlights identified for Cape Town in the presentation:

*   Nelson Mandela took his first steps of freedom in Cape Town, and Cape Town should own this historic moment

*   quality education facilities, with four top class universities in Cape Town and Stellenbosch.  Stanford has set up a satellite campus in the city, and Harvard is said to follow suit.   UCT had been voted top university in Africa, and best value for Money MBA in world in a Financial Times survey

*   safe CBD

*   excellent and modern infrastructure, including the airport, the IRT bus system, the station, highways, and the Cape Town Stadium

*   ‘cosmopolitan entry point into South Africa and Africa’

*   Focus on Biodiversity, with the smallest but most bountiful floral kingdom.  Kirstenbosch has won gold or silver for the past 33 years at the Chelsea Flower Show in London

*   Excellent healthcare facilities, with pioneering medical leadership, including Dr Christiaan Barnard’s heart transplant world first

*   One of best value guest house and B&B cities, offering not only 5-star accommodation

*   An historic port city

*   The V&A is South Africa’s leading tourist destination, and has further development plans

*   The Green Point Urban Park

*   A living heritage in the Castle, the oldest building in South Africa

*   A historic showcase of creativity at the Iziko museums and galleries

*   Living contemporary culture with African and European roots, which is not gumboot dancing!

*   Rich music tradition, in goema and Cape Minstrel music, but also current, with Goldfish, Jack Parow, Freshly Ground, Kyle Shepherd, Locnville, Die Antwoord, and Abdullah Ibrahim.  The Cape Town International Jazz Festival has become a world event.

*   Sporting tradition, in hosting the world’s largest timed Argus Cycle race, and the Volvo Ocean Race includes Cape Town, and sportspersons such as Para-Olympic star Natalie du Toit, and the development of the paddleyak

*   A theatre tradition, with Athol Fugard receiving a Lifetime Achievement award at the Tony’s for his plays

*   Africa’s first billionaire and space traveller Mark Shuttleworth, and his Shuttleworth Foundation, supporting IT development.  Development of Silicon Cape.

*   Sustainability Institute of the University of Stellenbosch

*   The Cape Town International Convention Centre is the leading convention centre in Africa

*   The leading builder of twin-hull catamarans

*  The favourite film and photography location, because of the beauty of and good light in the city, and the potential of a James Bond movie being shot in the city

*  Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Past President FW de Klerk

*   Table Mountain, which is a finalist for the New7Wonders of the World

*   Visits by magnificent Southern Right whales, home to penguins

*   Environmentally-friendly Green Cabs, and the opening up of cycle and pedestrian routes in the city 

*   Leading environmental and sustainable city, with all new low-cost housing built with solar geyser panels, and wind-farming in Darling.  ‘Smart Living Handbook’ for sustainability written by City of Cape Town 

*   Three wine routes within Cape Town and 16 on the city’s doorstep, with many boutique wine farms

*   Beer tourism is a new segment, with 40 micro breweries within a 2-hour drive of Cape Town.  Inspiring new BOS ice-tea 

*   Fresh produce markets, with organic foods, outstanding restaurants such as The Test Kitchen and Mzoli’s Meat define Cape Town, and the plan is to develop a Master Chefs Cape Town series.   Having Justin Bonello showcase South African food is a boost for the city.  Charly’s Bakery is a passionate, all-women team, who baked a cake representing Cape Town for the Design Indaba.

*   Cape Town is one of three finalists for World Design Capital 2014, with Bilbao and Dublin, spearheaded by the Cape Town Partnership.  The judges will be in Cape Town from 24 – 27 July, and the winning city will be announced on 26 October. The Design Indaba is a design highlight for the country, with its annual conference and exhibition.  At the last exhibition, attendees were asked to write in support of the city’s bid – this comment summarised what Cape Town stands for: “Cape Town’s people are her most beautiful landscape”.

*    Cape Town has a vibrant fashion scene, designer Dion Chang saying that “The tip of Africa is the tipping point”.

*   Cape Town is at the center of the magazine publishing industry.

*   The city has excellent furniture designers

*   The Joule electric car is being built in Cape Town, the first in Africa.

*   Cape Town has more Social Media users than any other part of the country 

 During her presentation, Mrs Helmbold made a number of statements about our city:

*   Economy based on tourism, finance, infrastructure, food and wine, logistics, and creative industries.

*   Cape Town is at the tipping point, either sinking into oblivion, or living up to the accolades it is reaping

*   Cape Town has been in a brand vacuum since the World Cup – not spending money on marketing the city will lead us to the example of Sydney, which is seeing a steady decline in visitors as it decided to not market the city after the 2000 Olympics

*   A destination is not just a slogan or a logo

*   Cape Town is a city of contrasts, of haves and have-nots

*   Brand Cape Town’s strength is Tourism (Visit), it is neutral on its education and residential facilities (Live and Learn), and weak on its potential as a centre of employment and investment (Work and Invest).

*   Cape Town underperforms in domestic tourism, mainly relative to Durban

*   Conversion of holidaymakers into business tourists is needed for Cape Town, and business visitors must be encouraged to return as holidaymakers, as Cape Town is weak as a Business Brand

*   Cape Town is a ‘challenger brand’ which does not have a long-established history, and stands for freedom, freshness and transformation, attractive to a world that has got tired of visiting boring places. “Challenger brands harness the power of authenticity, locals first, emotional pull, storytelling (Word of Mouse)”.

*   The pillars of Cape Town are Robben Island; its cultural diversity; the food and wine industry; Biodiversity; Table Mountain; Cape of Good Hope; hubs of innovation, creativity, enterprise and government; higher education and skills training; Sports and MICE; and Colour and Light.  

Cape Town Tourism is to assist business-related bodies in the city to market the city with a ‘brand box’.   It has worked with Accelerate, Cape Town Routes Unlimited, Wesgro, Cape Town Partnership, and the City of Cape Town in developing the new positioning for Cape Town, to establish it as ‘one of the top world cities to live, work, invest, learn and visit, in order to drive inclusive economic growth and social transformation in Cape Town’.  The presentation we attended was the last, and the implementation phase will now commence, Mrs Helmbold said.  In question time, FEDHASA Cape chairman Dirk Elzinga stated that great things are happening in Cape Town, but ‘we are not telling the world’, he said.

Mel Miller, former ad agency owner and creative director, and ex Cape Town Tourism Board member, is very critical of Cape Town’s new ‘Inspirational’ positioning, saying that it has been used by Edinburgh (‘Inspiring Capital’) already.  Miller points out that a previous tourism strategy consultant to Cape Town Tourism comes from Edinburgh! 

Mrs Helmbold showed a video presentation by Silver Bullet meant to represent Cape Town.  It was certainly not one of a beautiful Cape Town, but one of a very cloudy looking Cape Town, with a lot of focus on clouds billowing over Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles, and what appeared as a fast-speed race through Cape Town.  I was NOT inspired by it, and it did not represent any of the Inspiration that Mrs Helmbold had presented to the audience.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter: @WhaleCottage

Fugard Theatre transforms into Bioscope with Classic Film Festival!

I was impressed with the screening of the film of the Fugard play “The Road to Mecca” at the Fugard Theatre two weeks ago, given not only the content of the 1970’s movie, but also how well The Fugard Theatre had been transformed into the Fugard Theatre Bioscope.

The Fugard Theatre opened about a year ago, and its service teething problems have been largely sorted, other than the slowness of the ticket buying procedure if one has not pre-booked.  A few months ago the management fall-out was widely documented.  But all seems to have settled down now, and the management cleverly has transformed the theatre into what it calls a Bioscope, and even sells popcorn now, to fit the theme!   In addition, one will be able to buy soup and Thelema wines. The Theatre now has proper individual and most comfortable seats, having originally had benches, which did not allow one to book a specific seat, and seating then was on a first come first grabbed basis.  The movies are projected onto a giant screen on the stage.  One may take one’s popcorn and drinks into the theatre, showing a huge relaxation of the management in its attitude to its clients relative to when it opened.

Earlier this month the Fugard Bioscope kicked off with a week of films made about Fugard plays, a different film every night.  I enjoyed ‘The Road to Mecca’, starring Yvonne Bryceland, Athol Fugard and the very youthful Kathy Bates and Soli Philander.  It told the story of Helen, the owner of the now National Monument Owl House in Nieu Bethesda, with superb acting by Bryceland in particular.  Fugard received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in New York last week, ironic that his recognition should come from outside the country.

From today, running for four weeks, the Fugard Theatre Bioscope is running a themed Winter Classic Film Festival, costing R40 per ticket, and screenings start at 8 pm on Mondays – Saturdays, as follows:

20 – 25 June : Award-winning German and French Thrillers: Z, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Carlos, A Prophet, Mesrine

27 June – 2 July: Classic Political Thrillers: Seven Days in May, The Day of the Jackal, The Conversation, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, Network

4 – 9 July: Gay Movies: Brokeback Mountain, Dog Day Afternoon, Philadelphia, Bad Education, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Milk

12 – 16 July: Rock Concerts: Woodstock, Pink Floyd live in Berlin, Simon & Garfunkel – Concert in Central Park, The Last Waltz – The Band, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones 

Winter Classic Film Festival, The Fugard Theatre Bioscope, Caledon Street, Cape Town.  Tel (021) 461-4554. Book at Theatre or at www.computicket.com

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Hermanus Office National Sweet and The Fugard Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award goes to Hermanus Office National, a stationery shop that sells a large range of stationery items in a smallish shop opposite SupaQuick in Hermanus, at the most unbelievably low prices.  Printer and fax cartridges are generally expensive when bought at Incredible Connection.     A typical M40 cartridge for a Samsung fax machine costs R394 at Hermanus Office National, compared to R 401 at Walton’s and an incredible R 499,95 at Incredible Connection! The goods in the shop are neatly displayed, given its small space, and the owner’s son was very efficient in taking payment. 

The Sour Service Award goes to The Fugard theatre, which opened a mere 3 weeks ago.  The booking service was friendly and trusting (telephonic booking of tickets without requesting credit card details), the ticket collection process was efficient, and the ticket price was cheap at R 50.  The entrance to the theatre is via an adjoining ex-church, beautifully restored and lit, a lovely space in which to meet other theatre-goers, with a large bar, at which one can pre-order and pre-pay one’s drinks for interval, a novel idea.   Everything was fine up to this point.  An irritation relative to other Cape Town theatres is that seating is on a first-come first-served basis, like at The Labia, rather antiquated, so one had to go up to the third floor to get a seat, far from the stage, and had to sit on long benches as opposed to individual seats. No one was prepared to shift up to make space for others – meaning a shortage of seating due to gaps in between.  On the way to the seating, four different members of staff asked patrons to switch off their cellphones.  The patron was attacked when she was checking her last Twitter message, the phone having been set on silent – the hostess threatened to remove the phone.   The hostess was standing on the staircase on the aisle, next to the patrons, and kept marching up and down the aisle, berating patrons for even daring to touch their phones to check messages.  One couple arrived late (the theatre shows strangely start at 19h30) and was let in, and shown their seats with a torch, annoying all patrons on the aisle.   A patron wanted to go the cloakroom before interval, and was refused permission to leave by the hostess.  The hostess made a huge disturbance while trying to explain why she would not let the patron out.   The sneakers worn by the staff make a squeaky noise when they walk along the aisles.   At interval the patron went to find the Manager Johan Kupserburger, and only managed to get half the complaint about the disturbances to him, before being rudely cut off by him, as he had just spotted Mangusotho Buthelezi in the audience.   At interval two patrons almost came to blows, as the more assertive patrons were served first by the three bar staff trying to serve about 250 patrons, ahead of those that had stood there for longer.  After interval two hostesses were put on duty where the theatre-goer was sitting, apparently as a fire regulation (the 70-page Western Cape ‘By-Law for Community Fire Safety’ does not mention such a requirement at all) for the building.   The new hostess walked up and down too, talked to her colleague right next to the patrons during the show, and kept moving – standing up and sitting down on the steps.   Feedback presented to the Manager at the end of the show was greeted with disbelief, implying that the patron was not telling the truth!  He did admit that the staff had only been working at the Theatre for 2 weeks.  He then wanted to force the patron to speak to the Director, instead of asking the Director to come to the patron in a quiet corner.  The Theatre has the most terrible karma and the staff are fanatical about reacting to cellphones, not understanding that reading or texting a message, or Twittering, does not affect the volume of the phone.   Ironically, a bottle and plastic cups fell over during the show, for all to hear.   The end result was a horrid evening, with little enjoyment of what was a most unusual production of the Mozart opera ‘The Magic Flute’ a la township-style, with marimbas only in place of a full orchestra.  

POSTSCRIPT 28/11:   The owner of the Fugard Theatre Eric Abraham, London-based South African, had the Isango Portobello theatre company expelled from the premises last week, reports the Cape Argus.  Financial and creative issues between Abraham and Isango Portobello’s Mark Dornford-May may have been the cause. The next performance at The Fugard will be in January, an Athol Fugard play translated into Afrikaans ‘Die Kaptein se Tier’. 

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.