Robin Hogarth, directing Arts Festival operations

The Southern African Arts festival is based on the St. Hill Festival in Britain. It was the brainchild of Debbie James in South Africa and composer/musician Duncan Lorien from the UK, who was previously involved with the St. Hill festival. Composer, musician, and expert on ethnic music, Robin Hogarth, current ED of the St. Hill festival readily agreed to join the committee during the time he was in South Africa and a very strong committee of (mostly) OT's was put together.

The first festival was held at Summerhill, a Scientology school in Midrand, just outside Johannesburg in 1999. Unlike St. Hill, it was decided that the festival should be held over a weekend, with concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening and workshops through the day on Saturday and Sunday. This formula has proved to be very successful with all the Scientologists that have attended our first four festivals.

We are fortunate in having a real depth of musical talent in Johannesburg as well as poets and actors. The workshops have also been very successful. A number of artists with failed purposes have been rehabilitated and others who did not realise they had artistic talent have been spurred on to produce all kinds of interesting art.

At our second festival, also at Summerhill school, we had eight or nine Scientologists from Britain attending our festival. Most of them ended up performing as singers or actors, which really added to the excitement of the event. Mike, one of the UK visitors delivered a workshop on West Indian music. Others performed an hysterical short comedy. The festival was a huge success and numbers of attendees grew from the previous year. This year, we had a troupe of African drummers and singers who opened the show for us. Since then we have always included a strong African theme in our concerts, especially the Friday night event, which is open to the public.

For the third festival, we were asked by the Executive Director of Johannesburg Day Org, Albert de Beer, to hold it on the site of the soon to be opened new Johannesburg Super Org. We managed to use the shell of the main building, which was previously the famous old Kensington Golf Course clubhouse, where many of the world's top golfers have played from time to time. We had to use all our ingenuity to set the place up, but the result was excellent.

Our fourth festival, held in the completed premises of the new Johannesburg Org in March 2004, was voted the best festival so far. We were very fortunate to have two celebrities from overseas. Stan Gerson, OT VIII, the world famous magician from Los Angeles arrived early and did a tour around South Africa, visiting all the outer South African Orgs. Stan gave the most fantastic motivational talks as well as magic shows in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg North and Pretoria. A number of people subsequently came back on lines. Stan also held a fund raising event in Durban and pulled in massive contributions towards the building of a new Durban Org.

We also had Georgina Roberts from the UK. She is a wonderful London West End actress and singer who produced our Sunday concert as well as performed on all three nights. Ably supported by local talent, the concerts were simply amazing.

Over the years we have had all kinds of workshops. These range from the regular ones such as Music, Dance, Acting (George Randall, the well known Native American movie and TV actor, now living here for a couple of years, delivers wonderful acting workshops), writing, painting, poetry and photography, to all kinds of unusual activities. These have included Judo, Aromatherapy, how to become a disc jockey, drumming, screenwriting, computer skills and so on. All workshops include the ways in which the person delivering the workshop, uses LRH tech in the application of their skills. Where possible the products of the workshops are then performed or displayed in the Saturday or Sunday night concert. The workshops come up with new angles to their subjects every year, so repeat attendance at a regular workshop is never a wasted experience.

At every festival, top, qualified auditors give metered interviews intended to pick up losses and failed purposes in art. These have achieved remarkable results and do not always have artistic outcomes. A couple of attendees have subsequently joined staff. Others have gone back onto auditing or training lines at the Orgs and others have revived their careers as artists.

Each year, the Festival seems to get bigger and better than ever, and the expectation is that the 2009 Festival will too!

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