MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Why look further afield for expertise, when it is locally available in abundance.

That was one of the key outcomes at a master class hosted in Mossel Bay this week.

The Western Cape Government hosted its annual Events Incubation Conference in George in January this year.

The conference was aimed at stakeholders such as event organisers, suppliers, sponsors, government agencies, and more, to come together and share lessons and experiences in order to learn from one another other.

One of the requests that came from the conference, was to host a session to share best practice content for festivals. As a result, a follow-up master class was hosted in Mossel Bay on Tuesday, 5 March, where some of this content was shared.

According to Mushfieqah Salie, priority programmes coordinator in the Department of the Premier, Western Cape Government, Mossel Bay was chosen as the host to get

the appropriate local content on the programme and to showcase the achievements and excellent events reputation of Mossel Bay.

Paul Hoffman from the South Cape Economic Partnership presented the first session. His talk, named Building Festival Partnerships 101, was most insightful. The "take home" message for attendees was that collaborative leadership was essential to event and festival success.

During the second session, a panel made up of Aneli Gerber from Mossel Bay Tourism; local journalist and vice chair of the Mossel Bay Creative Culture Association (MOCCA), Cornelle Carstens, Gwynne Harding, representing the Mossel Bay Municipality and Jean Neethling from the Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, hosted a discussion facilitated by Denver Moses on events in Mossel Bay.

The essence of the discussion focused on getting back to basics when it comes to festival planning.

The master class was concluded by Johan Bester from the department, who shared a toolkit developed to measure event feedback.

The next master class will take place in Oudsthoorn, purposely during the annual Klein Karoo Kunstefees, which celebrates 25 years of existence this year.

Here are Denver Moses (Western Cape government, Department of the Premier), Jean Neethling (Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport), Aneli Gerber (Mossel Bay Tourism), Mushfieqah Salie (Department of the Premier), Cornelle Carstens (MOCCA vice chair), Gwynne Harding (Mossel Bay Municipality) and Johan Bester (Department of the Premier).

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