and children’s cartoons,’ religion was also a strong and recurring theme which appeared in approximately 17% of early post-Soviet stamps in Russia (Brunn, 2011:30). Child (2010) surveys approaches to stamp design taken in Latin America, noting that in the region over ‘the last several decades stamps have developed their own strong identity, which increases their value as a source of information on the area’ (Child, 2010:109). Authoritarian governments in South America have sought to legitimate and embed themselves, foreground their political views and declaim new social epochs using stamps (Child, 2010:116). There are also several examples of the utilisation of stamps to convey messages pertaining to culture echoing the definition of cultural relations and its current function as a tool for growing trade and inward investment. For example, stamps relating to coffee production and consumption mirror the cultural and economic importance of the crop for Latin American identity and trade. Latin American countries have also been prolific in their production of stamps depicting tourism, advertising attractions both nationally and internationally in the hope of stimulating the industry and bolstering national pride in their natural endowment (Child, 2005:124). Tourism also features heavily in the thematic classifications that Raento & Brunn allocate to stamps in their analysis of Finnish postage stamps 1917-2000, the genre of tourism, leisure and recreation’ was portrayed in a quarter of the overall sample of 1457 stamps. The analysis identified 16 classifications of which stamps featuring arts and culture and folklore, customs and rituals represented a combined 28% of total output (Raento & Brun, 2005;147). Tourism featured much less prominently in the early post-Soviet issues of stamps issued by newly independent European and Central Asian states, this was at least in part due to the relative underdevelopment of the sector at the time (Brunn, 2000:322). It is interesting to note that – of the 19 countries surveyed in Brunn’s review of post-soviet stamp-iconography, in addition to flags, coats of arms, maps and famous sons, ‘traditional arts and costumes appeared on Central Asian stamps. The works of famous landscape and portrait artists were depicted on the stamps of seven countries’ (Brunn, 2000:321) and the majority of states chose to depict significant poets, writers, artists, song festivals, scientists and athletes too (Brunn, 2000:322). Jenkins (2012) records the ways in which South African rock art has been incorporated into regional stamp design, charting the journey of depictions from those which portrayed bushmen as primitive and/or childlike to those in which rock art has increasingly be utilised as a national symbol of South Africa (Jenkins, 2012:470 & 473-80).
7.0 Some Concluding Remarks – Towards a Definition of ‘Showcasing’ This review has examined scholarly and grey literature analysing arts and cultural events, which provide an opportunity for the ‘showcasing’ of creative output. The term ‘showcasing’ currently has
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