Creative Cape Town

One look at its website will tell you it’s not a social networking space for fine art. It’s also not another online gallery. So what exactly IS The Arterial Network?

If expression is the blood of a creative being, Arterial Network is its African heart. This ambitious, non-profit organisation is a vessel and a vehicle of cultural exchange and creative change – an advocacy space, a think tank, a networking platform and a policy-making space for the arts.

Designed “to enhance the sustainability of creative industries in Africa”, it includes individuals, organisations, donors, companies and institutions engaged in the African cultural sector.  Like an artery, it carries sustaining energy to distant extremes that then feed back to its creative centres.

Its formation was iterative. In March 2007, more than 50 delegates from 14 African countries met on Gorée Island, Senegal, and discussed revitalising Africa’s cultural assets.  Delegates resolved to unite across national borders to challenge Africa’s contribution of less than 1% to world trade in creative goods and services. By its second conference in Johannesburg, September 2009, The Arterial Network of delegates rose significantly to 130 individuals from 28 African countries.  A constitution was adopted, a 10-person Steering Committee elected and country representatives mandated to establish Arterial Network branches across Africa*.

Still, what’s a constitution without action?  In the recent past, Arterial Networks (AN) has conducted two 10-day “winter schools”, each time instructing individuals from 17 African countries in the art of building sustainable artists’ networks. This assists directly in developing networks “to lobby on behalf of Africa’s creative sector at national, continental and international levels”, one of the Network’s central focuses.

In other projects, it established a task team to devise a cultural policy framework for African countries, answering their aim to “build capacity and leadership within the African creative sector”.  AN has actively involved African artists and cultural activists in conferences, workshops and training sessions, locally and nationally “to collect and distribute information to empower civil society in African countries to take informed action in their interests” and to “help build new markets for African artists and for Africa’s creative goods.”

All good on paper, but what about reality? Various countries have already agreed, in writing, to uphold progressive policy practises regarding the arts. Good examples are UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the Nairobi Plan of Action on Cultural Industries and the Belgrade Recommendation on the Status of the Artist. According to AN, however, for proposals to be implemented on the ground, in bold shanty towns and bright green jungles, in your world and my world, pressure from civil society is essential.  AN provides a platform for the education and collective action necessary in achieving this. Because they’re switched on, membership is free.

Your vote (really) counts.  In addition to the obvious – access to the Network’s extensive database, its website and newsletter all useful for marketing and information -  Members can run and vote in all AN matters. Members also receive news alerts about benefits, project tenders, partnerships and opportunities. There are Arterial events and training courses open to members at no expense (or at reduced cost), and members may also receive priority when project tenders and other income-generating opportunities are allocated.

*The Network’s Secretariat is based in the Cape Town Central City at the African Arts Institute, supported by Spier, a leisure and hospitality company which is also a generous patron of the arts.