Interview by Jeriah Fredericks

All images courtesy of Open Book Festival

We at VERVE love to have conversations - it was the inspiration and forms the basis of most of what we do. Conversations about art and artistry, conversation about culture and the cultural landscape of the city. But we’re the new kids on the block. We’ve only being doing this for just over a year. The Open Book Festival has been at it for over a decade now.

Walking past The Book Lounge almost every day, I’ve been constantly reminded that this year’s edition is but a week away. But while I was procrastinating getting my tickets, an opportunity arose to actually chat to Frankie Murrey, co-ordinator and curator behind the festival itself - a conversation about the beauty of conversation.

“This year's lineup brings together the most incredible mix of returning Festival family and exciting new voices from across South Africa and the continent for three days of powerful conversations!” - @openbookfest

What is the Open Book Festival?

It started off as a book festival. People are still caught up in the idea that books are for elite literary types - which in South Africa means white as well. After we hosted the first one back in 2011 we quickly realised that we had to actively think about how to rebrand, so that it becomes this space that welcomes the diverse community of our city. It’s one of the things I’ve always gotten quite upset about, when people have said “This festival feels like it could be happening anywhere in the world” - that's not what we’re after. We want it to feel like something that can only happen in Cape Town. Yes, the conversations might be relevant anywhere, but it's gotta have that Cape Town feel.

So we started thinking about the festival as more of a gathering for conversation - a festival of conversation through the lens of books. We have all these amazing people up on stage who have put so much thought into their books and their work that they’re now able to have these conversations with all of that thought in mind. They’re able to convey a complicated idea into such simple to understand language, which really helps you in your day to day when you’re trying to have a conversation with people. We all know the frustration of that moment where you know that something is wrong, you know what you believe in, but you struggle to wrestle the words into an argument that is going to bring your point across easily or succinctly.

Feminist Imaginings - Mbali Sikakana, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Gothataone Moeng and Barbara Boswell, taken at Open Book Fest 2024 - photography by @iskeemsemicimbi

That’s one of the real benefits of attending the Open Book Festival - you get to listen to and be a part of all these conversations that are really important to all of us. Whether its about GBV, Queerness, inequality, or housing, you get to hear people talk about them. And that helps you to find the words that you’ve been looking for all along. “This is how I can get my family who has been stuck 20 years in the past to actually think about now. This is how I’m going to speak to someone about why housing matters”

This is what Open Book is - an amazing space to gather, to learn, to celebrate. And I think the one thing which is also crucial is that it’s an opportunity to find community. It’s not just for people who have a pile of books next to their bed. You don't have to have ever set foot in a library or a bookshop to attend. Are you interested in the world? Are you interested in being part of conversations where we imagine a future that we can all live in? Then this is where you should be.

Gathering Our Voices - Siphokazi Jonas, taken at Open Book Fest 2024 - photography by @iskeemsemicimbi

On the topic of community, how did you guys adjust after going online during lockdown? How has the space of the community changed since?

After COVID we shifted from being a 5 day fully international festival to being a 3 day festival that solely focused on African writers. Part of the reason for that was budgetary - how we thought we should be focused on spending the funds which we have access to. The Arts community, and writers specifically, had really suffered during COVID so we thought we should find a way to funnel as much funding as we could into those pockets. So we restructured in a way that made sense to us. We also shifted elements which had been embedded in the festival outwards - the Youth Fest became its own thing in March and Workshop Week became its own thing in June.

We are considering going back to fully international, but it does depend on how conversations after the festival go. We are now in a different time, it’s no longer post-COVID, so we’re asking ourselves how we can have conversations across the diaspora. How do we build community in a time where there is so much conflict and so many issues around governments not supporting even the most passive protests? How do we support people like that? That’s part of our thinking going forward.

There have been headlines about the funding campaign the festival had to undergo in order to ensure that the festival could run this year. Could you tell me more about that?

The amazing thing is that we managed to reach our R500 000 target and overtake it, but it’s been a very emotional time. Launching the campaign was a difficult decision, and then people started giving us money, which was heartbreaking.

In terms of finding funding for a festival, it is immensely hard to run a festival like this without support. We keep our prices low and issue an enormous number of comps, and we aren't interested in changing that model. Ideally I would love to have all of the events be free of charge, but that’s not where we are. No book festival is going to be able to just support itself financially. Which means that you’re reliant on sponsors, which can come from government sponsors or corporate sponsors. In the model of global north, most of the basic funding comes from some level of government, and then you go to little sponsors for the ‘nice-to-have’ things. But ideally the day-to-day running costs are covered by government funding.

Up Close with Maneo - Koleka Putuma and Maneo Mohale, taken at Open Book Fest 2024 - photography by @iskeemsemicimbi

Now of course in South Africa there is a lot more money needed for things that are more urgent, and I understand that. The issue becomes that with corporate sponsors, their priorities are not necessarily aligned with getting people to a book festival to better understand themselves and the world they find themselves in. We’re very low down on the list when marketing teams look at sponsorship.

It’s really tricky for the arts generally to get funding from corporate, and to get it from the government is beoming increasingly hard as well. And it's not clear how we can do any better. So this is the difficult space we find ourselves in. After the festival we’re going to have to sit down and find out what we’re going to do differently in order not to end up in this position again. Obviously it’s not sustainable to put out a crowdfunding call once a year in order to put on this festival.

What more can we and the community do to help this issue going forward?

I think that the big thing is that we’re urgently in need of sponsors. And those don’t need to be to the tune of hundreds of thousands of rands. It can be in kind - sponsors who can help us to put on a single event, sponsors who can donate hoodies, or who can buy books for the youth festival to donate.

Those are the kinds of things that we need help with. We need help getting into the right inbox, we need to be introduced by people who are trusted, and we need some corporates to actually buy in and say “It is worth our while to align ourselves with conversations that really matter”.

For our readers - why should they attend the festival, and what should we do to build attendance and awareness of the festival?

The events are amazing, They are so exciting. The conversations are fierce, they are necessary, they are insightful - I can’t say enough good things about the talks that we host. Also, there are things that are driven by people from outside the festival - one for example is the Slam City Showcase happening this year.

The collaborations we do are a fantastic way to invite people into the space - they get access to a lot of support that they might not otherwise have, or a lot of things which they would have to organise themselves which we already do.

We also have a really cool marketplace featuring City of Cape Town emerging artists who are going to be vendors, there is going to be a graffiti crew doing live art, there are comic book creators - every single year we try and bring fresh faces to the marketplace. So I would urge anyone who is creating things that can be sold to come and explore the space, get a feel for what’s there and then maybe you’re one of the people there selling work.

Collaboration is key to what we do. If you’re at the festival and you think to yourself ‘do you know what could work as a conversation here’ you can get in touch with me and we can workshop the idea and try to figure out if it can happen. I can think of at least 4 events happening this year that came about as a conversation which ensued from Open Book Fest 2024. But unless you’ve actually been to the festival you won't have those kinds of ideas.

It’s an exciting space. It really is a great opportunity to find new brands, to learn from other people and be learnt from. It’s a truly beautiful skills-sharing opportunity.

We all love a good gab, but not often do we get to be part of a conversation that carries as much weight as those on offer at Open Book Fest, nor are we often spoilt with such a wide variety of topics.

Flip through the Open Book Fest programme - I’m sure that something will gab your eye. Be sure to get your tickets soon and hopefully we’ll run into you next weekend.

Who knows, maybe you’ll be on the market place floor next year, or maybe even hosting a conversation yourself. We sure hope to be there too.

What’s on at the Open Book Festival 2025

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