CLOSURESTATEMENT

Good day, wonderful creatives, supporters and arts survivors.

I am writing to you today with some rather sad news. I am currently left with no choice but to suspend the service of the South African Theatre on Demand platform.

While the platform was a spark of passion, love for the arts and the sustainability of artists during the pandemic, I sit in a position where I am currently managing the upkeep of the platform on my own. Sales have faded out over the last few months as we slowly find ways of taking to spaces to perform and as people slowly venture back into the world. These drop-in numbers make the platform non-self sustainable.

My efforts to land grants to further develop the framework, see to technical needs as well as retain work and record new works, has unfortunately been unsuccessful.

I would like to thank every artist, festival, producer and sponsor for coming along for the ride, for being a part of something fun, fresh, by artists for artists and something proudly South African.

Thank you for trusting me and the incorporating team with your art, money and time. I am very proud of what we have built and pleased with the overall success of the project. We were able to generate more than double the amount of revenue than we spent getting the platform off of the ground. We did this as a team of three passionate individuals who are by no means web developers.

Perhaps in the future, I will find an opportunity to start the platform up once more to serve as a South African run archival space for South African Theatrical works.

The platform will be suspended by the end of this month 30th April 2021 and all content will come down. Thereafter I will prepare updated reports for public viewing on request.

Until next time, keep safe, keep creative and keep dreaming!

Yours in Arts and Culture

Blythe Stuart Linger