Central SA
Bloemfontein mall festival might cost north of R11 million─── TSHEHLA KOTELI 12:20 Mon, 18 Sep 2023
The Lemo Fest, which will run from 1 to 15 October in Bloemfontein, is estimated to cost at least R11 million, offering hundreds of people employment.
Speaking to the founder and CEO of Kenworth Group, organising the festival, Freddie Kenney, he said the initial budget was around R7.9 million. However, at 70% completion of the preparations, they had exceeded the budget. “By the look of things, by the time we are done putting together the festival, we would have spent at least R11 million. But this will be a great investment in the people of Mangaung.”
He said the company Kenworth was born when he was at the age of 23, and it means the Kenney Family is worth the business. “When my wife and I were thinking of the names we could call our store at the time, we came up with the name Kenworth because the Kenney family is worth this business.”
Lemo Fest will be hosted at the Lemo Mall, situated on the borders of Heidedal and Phahameng. The mall will be turning seven in October and they thought they could celebrate with a festival to also thank their clientele for the support over the years. “When the idea to host the festival was born, it was supposed to be a three–day thing – Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
The idea was also to piggyback on Macufe, which is the flagship of the department of arts and culture that has been in existence for at least 20 years. “We have been waiting to see what Macufe has planned, but the more silent the department was, the more worried I became.” When nothing was being announced around June, he went to the finance department and decided to do his own thing with his team.
What surprised him was how big the festival became, from a three-day event to a fifteen-day event. Since the preparations for Lemo Fest, multiple people in the township have been offered temporary employment. “We had around 190 people employed for the cleaning up around the venue, filling of potholes and cleaning up sewage spillages.”
The team plans to do away with traditional methods of advertising such as printed posters, instead, they want to put digital screens to promote the event. When they realised how big the festival was going to be, they decided to contact Ben Moseme, founder and CEO of C-Squared to help organise the festival, as he is more clued up in the events space. C-Squared is appointed as a service provider for Lemo Fest.
