Investigating the social impacts of the Taung Cultural Calabash

Abstract

Festivals and events have a long history of acting as tourist attractions and turning places into tourism destinations. Events are an important promoter in tourism, and are an effective contributor to a destination’s positive image. Temporary visitors and local communities come together for the duration of the events, which has a major social influence. The Taung Cultural Calabash Festival (TCCF) aims to build a robust commitment by developing the arts and artists of the North West province by stimulating the pride of local people in their diverse cultures and art forms by giving them a performance space. This study’s aim was to investigate the social impacts of an event that takes place in Taung, namely the Taung Cultural Calabash Festival. The underlying assumption for this study was that residents of a specific region are the main contributing factor towards the growth of a successful and sustainable events industry. This allowed the researcher to obtain perceptions and practical outcomes with regard to the social impacts of the Taung Cultural Calabash Festival on communities of Taung. Residents’ perceptions about the social impacts of the Cultural Calabash Festival are crucial for identifying strategic events management concerns and add significantly towards tourism growth in Taung. The population of the study was 14 303 and the sample size of 389 was determined using the Yamane’s formula. A non-probability sampling technique known as quota sampling was used in this study and a total of 389 copies of one uniform self- administered questionnaires were distributed and completed by different respondents. Copies of the questionnaire were distributed to five local villages of Taung namely; Chiefscourt, Lokaleng, Veertien, Nommerone and Khibitswane because of their proximity (approximately 500 m radius) to the venue where the festival takes place annually. The data obtained was captured in the forms of tables and figures and the key biodata variables were gender, residence, visitation of the festival, marital status, employment status, place of employment, educational level, whether residents had visited TCCF before and the number of times respondents visited the Taung Cultural Calabash Festival. The data collected was analysed in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Some of the analyses done included descriptive statistics to determine the demographic information of the respondents and a factor analysis which resulted in three factors, namely community development, community concern, and tourism growth and social disruptions. The positive social impacts of the Taung Cultural Calabash Festival to the community were identified as follows: providing education and knowledge about tourism in Taung, bringing the province together, allowing residents and tourists to have fun, and escape routine life. The negative social impacts were: an increase in substance abuse, an increase in traffic, increased crime, and disturbing the privacy of locals. The findings obtained from this study will contribute immensely towards the strategic management of festivals by the Department of Culture, Arts and Traditional Affairs (CATA) and Department of Tourism in the North West. Views from local residents considered that examining the social effects of events on communities is critical; one reason is that local residents can react harshly to the negative impacts caused by the event and no longer value the event. The success of local cultural festival events is impossible without proper support and involvement of locals. Therefore, effective measures to curb the negative impacts of events on communities can increase local support and result in continuous growth in the community. The contribution of this study is that a model was developed that supports the social impacts that the Taung Cultural Calabash Festival should provide and this model can be used to help event organisers to ensure that their festival events do provide positive impacts. Furthermore, an effective strategic management plan for events should be formed and be implemented to gain local community support in order to gain loyalty and exceed the expectations of locals.