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| Robin Hogarth, directing Arts Festival
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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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