Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality pulls out of festival sponsorship

This year’s edition of the Richmond Hill Street Music Festival in Gqeberha has been postponed after the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality pulled out its sponsorship, just a month before the planned event date.

“The municipality told us on Thursday 1 August that the festival would not be funded, along with 4 other events. We are not aware which ones they are because the financial situation no longer allowed it,” Alliance Francaise Gqeberha director Guillaume FAVIER NIRERE told The Citizen.

Alliance Française in Gqeberha are the organisers of the festival founded in 2010. The abrupt decision by the municipality hasn’t given the organisers enough time to find an alternative partner.

“They’d been stalling for a few weeks, so we’d anticipated this by contacting our sponsors from previous years back in May to see if they could give us more support, but 1/3 of our budget was gone, which is huge.

And we had to carry on with all the usual organisation in these last few weeks and look for funding – the uncertainty made it insurmountable, so we had to cancel,” averred FAVIER NIRERE.

The Citizen is yet to receive a response from the municipality.

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Breach of contract

According to the director, a partnership contract was signed in 2022 for a period of three years with the municipality, and their sponsorship withdrawal is a breach of contract.

“Everything is subject to interpretation, we can’t take the risk of legal action, we have everything to lose and what matters to us is just to offer a warm and friendly festival to the people of NMBM(Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality),” FAVIER NIRERE cautiously said.

He said the whole thing is causing considerable harm to the long-running festival.

“We had managed to integrate it into the agenda, the 1st Saturday of September was a date that was integrated into the community, just a postponement and we broke the dynamic, we have already lost so much with this extremely late decision.”

FAVIER NIRERE said the municipality played a big role in its sponsorship, particularly after the Covid pandemic.

“Since the end of the COVID restrictions, we’ve managed to relaunch this event and without them, it wouldn’t have been possible. The last two editions of the festival have been extremely successful.

The municipality has also helped us with communications, with a number of posters and 1 billboard on the roadsides of Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and by coordinating the various municipal services to support all our service providers [in] safety, health and hygiene, etc.”

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Community

The festival is the brainchild of Alliance Française with the municipality coming on board in 2014 and 2017.

The first Street Music Festival took place around 21 June in 2010 which for the French is a very important day for celebrating music directly in the streets.

Fête de la Musique, which is French for World Music Day, originated in France in 1982 and has since become a global phenomenon, celebrated in over 700 cities worldwide in 120 countries for more than 40 years.

“It’s this atmosphere that we wanted to recreate in the magnificent Richmond Hill neighbourhood. To allow thousands of people to walk freely and enjoy beautiful concerts and shows. It’s that ‘French touch’ that we wanted to bring,” FAVIER NIRERE said.

The last two editions of the festival attracted thousands of patrons and the upcoming one was expected to break new ground in attendance, looking at how there are more applications submitted to participate in the Festival, whether the choirs, artists or crafters.

“Our axis this year was oriented on sport (linked to the Olympic Games taking place in Paris) and fashion and had new experiences to offer visitors.  It is our mission to make culture accessible to as many people as possible. And that’s what we managed to do in Gqeberha, in the old and very lively neighbourhood of Richmond Hill.”

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