Cape Town - This past weekend’s Cape Flats Book Festival was considered a great success, drawing approximately 2 000 people over two days.
The festival was the brainchild of acclaimed poet, businessman and philosopher Athol Williams. With wife and fellow literacy enthusiast and advocate Taryn Lock, Williams founded the non-profit organisation and festival organiser, Read 2 Rise.
Read 2 Rise works in under-resourced communities, providing access to brand new books. Read to Rise programme manager Roscoe Williams said the aim was to get children excited about reading.
The festival saw 32 events with 55 dynamic and inspiring authors and poets featured over two days at the West End Primary School, Mitchells Plain, and attracting approximately 2 000 attendees.
“If you look at the shocking state of our literacy rate, I believe that our communities need to be exposed to literary events like this. If we want to get our people excited to read, then we have to have these types of events where we can expose children, adults, to festivals,” Williams said.
The festival provided the opportunity for attendees to engage with local authors, publishers and poets, with various exhibitors present, and numerous titles on sale.
Life Righting Collective facilitator Hani du Toit said the local book festival was the second of its kind on the Cape Flats. The Life Righting Collective promotes writing and creative expression as necessary for the healing of life trauma.
“I understand that its intention (book festival) is to inspire locals to become readers and writers of our own stories, to uplift at a grassroots level and to develop a thirst for books and stories as an essential part of our culture,” Du Toit said.
“That was very effectively accomplished by having local authors and poets from across the Western Cape share their work and respond to questions from the audience. We cannot deny that we still live with the impact of apartheid education, so to ignite the curiosity and love of literature and authorship is a matter of activism.”
Du Toit said when youth saw themselves as authors, poets and publishers, their activism and agency was activated.
“When they see that it is possible to be the writers of history, the tellers of stories for future generations, they embrace their innate leadership talents and responsibility to be contributing citizens.”