Creative Cape Town

The Creative Clusters provide a platform for networking between dynamic people in Cape Town’s creative industries, stimulating innovative partnerships for economic and social development. Collaboration is a strength in today’s business climate: the local industry will only grow through us openly sharing information, ideas, resources and energy.

Launched on 7 February 2008 with Ravi Naidoo as guest speaker, the Clusters format evolved to feature three or four speakers, each presenting for 10 minutes, followed by a networking session. 2008’s theme was “Re-imagining Cape Town” and creatives who responded to the idea included architects Mokena Makeka, Luyanda Mphalwa, and Y Tsai; communication specialists Porky Hefer, Jonathan Cherry and Iain Harris, and acclaimed choreographer and performance artist Jay Pather.

The first four Creative Clusters took place at Woolworths House in Longmarket Street, where the talks were followed by drinks, snacks and energised conversations well into the evening. In 2009, Creative Clusters kicked off the year with a series of popular talks at the Design Indaba Expo, with industry leaders addressing the question: “Is Cape Town a Design City?” The Clusters are set to continue as after-work drinks events as well as breakfast gatherings. To attend, join our mailing list.

“In today’s creative economy, the real source of economic growth comes from the clustering and concentration of talented and productive people.” – Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida

Each Creative Cluster meeting has had its own distinct feel, with a selection of Cape Town’s top creative thinkers sparking the evenings’ though-provoking conversations. Here’s more about each one:

Launch event: 7 February 2008: Ravi Naidoo
The Creative Clusters launched with a bang, with hundreds of creatives attending the inaugural event. Local design evangelist Ravi Naidoo of Interactive Africa and Design Indaba fame reminded Capetonians of what a wealth of talent we have in the City with a presentation that he had been blowing people away with at international events.

Re-imagining Cape Town 2008: 12 June: Porky Hefer, Rashid Lombard, Gert Borman, Y Tsai
The second Creative Clusters event saw some dramatic infrastructural re-imagining of the City, with avant guard conceptualiser Porky Hefer of Animal Farm proposing that we turn our unfinished highways into Scaletrix tracks and entrepreneur Gert Bormans suggesting we sink the same highway, reconnecting the City, mountain and sea. EspAfrika’s Rashid Lombard spoke about his dreams for the Cape Town International Jazz Festival – already a massive event on the City’s calendar. Finally, award-winning multi-disciplinary designer Y Tsai went small, and spoke about his solutions for economical city living.

Re-imagining Cape Town 2008: 28 August: Luyanda Mphalwa, Jonathan Cherry, Iain Harris, Chris Ledochowski
The third Creative Cluster was ultimately a re-imagining of the use of space. Luyanda Mpahlwa of MMA Architects combined architecture and activism in his discussion of design solutions for low-cost housing. Jonathan Cherry of innovative communications agency Cherryflava Media asked attendees to re-imagine the City as a playground, using new mobile and other technologies to make our surroundings intriguingly interactive. Iain Harris of Coffee Beans Routes suggested that cultural expression as a tourism commodity could help people improve their situations, even in the least “scenic” parts of our City. The event also included a promotion of Chris Ledochowiski’s book, Cape Flats Details, documenting 25 years of his photographic work in this distinctively Cape Town area.

Re-imagining Cape Town 2008: 13 November: Erika Elk, Mokena Makeka, Jay Pather, Andrew Boraine
The final Creative Cluster of 2008 was a cross-industry celebration of exciting initiatives to look forward to, with speakers from the craft, architecture, performance art and city management sectors. Erika Elk of the Cape Craft and Design Institute discussed re-imagining craft economically and artistically, while influential choreographer Jay Pather spoke about the transformative power of site-specific dance performances. Mokena Makeka revealed that the redesign of the Cape Town Station included a re-imaging of the terminal as a creative space, with areas for performance and creative commerce. Finally, Andrew Boraine, CE of the Cape Town Partnership, introduced the Central City Development Strategy: a ten-year plan to develop the Central City as a a leading centre for knowledge, innovation, creativity and culture in Africa and the South.

Is Cape Town a Design City?: Design Indaba: February 2009
During the Design Indaba Expo, the Creative Cluster concept became the theme for the Creative Cape Town stand, with eighteen speakers responding to the topic is “Cape Town a Design City?” The stand, designed by Y Tsai, was a rectangular listening space echoing storytelling under trees. Highlights included District Six Museum’s Tina Smith’s talk on local cultural resources, David Schmidt on “Cape Town The Capital of Cool”, Catherine Stone, the City’s Director of Spatial Planning and Urban Design, on “Planning Space for Creativity”, Alistair King of King James on “Making a Creative Bubble”, Nick Ferguson of Indigo Properties on “The Role of Property Developers in Creating Clusters” and Alastair Rendall of ARG Design on the Integrated Rapid Transit (IRT) system.

This fascinating series of talks is available to view on Creative Cape Town’s YouTube channel.

Creative Cluster Breakfasts
To meet the demand for networking and information sharing, Creative Cape Town has started monthly breakfasts for small groups of creatives. The idea is to invite two people from three creative companies and give them the space to network with other creatives from divergent sectors.

The first breakfast was held on 29 April at Birds Café in Bree Street and included two emerging but dynamic communication companies Idoidea and Membrane, as well as Temo Consulting/Brown Bag Studio who use innovative creative methods for building organisational development and planning. There was plenty of idea-sharing over Birds Café’s famous coffee, and two of the companies even stayed on to take forward one of the opportunities discussed.

Watch the next issue of Creative News for information and contact Creative Cape Town to be part of this programme.