This year’s Arts Alive International Festival in Johannesburg over the month of September is jam-packed with local talent and performances, most of them for free.

This is the City of Johannesburg’s annual programmatic intervention to help stimulate development and cross-cultural exchange in the arts and entertainment sector and features an array of artists and musicians, starting off the the popular Jazz on the Lake on 2 September.

This is the 26th edition of the festival, which has marked itself as one of the highlights in the city’s calendar.

MMC for Community Development, Nonhlanhla Sifumba, said the Arts, Culture and Heritage Directorate of the City has partnered with various organisations and institutions in order to expand the service offering for the diverse people of Joburg.

Partners for the festival include the Gauteng Department of Economic Development, Arts, Culture and Recreation, Hillbrow Outreach Foundation, Iris Dawn Parker Productions, Heritage Unity Festival NPC, the Global Dance Supreme, Moshito, Vees Entertainment and C-Major Productions.

Tsotso Matlolane from Vees Entertainment said that the arts transcend race and cultural difference and that in the current state of these debates, the arts can bring people together and help them look at the bigger picture.

Sifumba said Arts Alive gives the city an opportunity to shake off the winter blues, and jump into Heritage Month – a month that gives a platform for the recognition and expression of the different aspects of our country’s diverse culture.

“Added to this, there is no better place to host the festival than in the City of Johannesburg. Johannesburg has for decades been a ‘melting pot’ of culture and tradition – a political hub, and the economic centre of the country,” she said.

“The arts have, since time immemorial, been an instrument of peacemaking and keeping, with the power to usher in both transformation and unity.”

Check out the line-up of events here: www.arts-alive.co.za

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