The 3rd edition of the Shukuma Mzansi! International Community Arts Centres Dialogue will this year take place in one municipality in each of the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga during the month of August.  

The National Department of Arts and Culture again partnered with the Sibikwa Arts Centre to realise part three of this sectoral dialogue between Irish, Flemish, French and South African Community Arts Centres with the purpose of  increasing institutional capacity, policy implementation and best practice.

For this third edition of the Shukuma Mzansi! SA-EU CAC Dialogue, titled ‘Implementing the National CAC Policy in Municipalities’, we have partnered with the Department of Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in order to warrant a good system of governance and proper roll-out which will contribute significantly to successful implementation in the municipalities. This 2019 dialogue will contain three 2-day dialogue-workshops and will be implemented in partnership with CoGTA and SALGA and the municipal arts, culture & heritage departments. Through the involvement of Flemish, French and Irish institutions, the dialogue 2019 ensures promotion of mutual understanding, cooperation and respect across borders. 

The Revised White Paper on Arts, Culture & Heritage presents an ideal opportunity for repositioning and strengthening the position of the community arts sector on a local level within the overall DAC policy framework. Key to the dialogue is a shift away from primarily thinking about community arts centres as an infrastructural input and toward thinking about a centre more rigorously in terms of its outputs. The previous SA-EU CAC Dialogues have demonstrated the value of a multi-dimensional engagement with policy development accompanied and informed by hands-on engagement and support and the mobilisation of local spheres of government; the partnership with CoGTA and SALGA  vastly increases the feasibility and scope of this dialogue.

This initiative is funded by the SA-EU Strategic Partnership – the Dialogue Facility which contributes to the strengthening of relations between the European Union and South Africa and encourages cooperation between equal partners in a number of areas in the economic, social and cultural fields.