Every good idea has a brain, and every good process has a heart. In the case of Creative Week Cape Town, the brain and the heart are housed in another body part called The Fringe: Cape Town’s Design and Innovation District.
To understand why The Fringe is the backbone of progressive projects in the City, take a look at the significant events that ahem embody the spirit of a city that lives to transform life through design. Notice how each event gives wings to different aspects of what Creative Cape Town is all about.
Image: Sarah Scott (www.hallucinarium.com)
Walking on walls Graffiti tour with Mak1one
What better way to celebrate the arts on the edge than to walk the streets wishing you were a renegade social reformer with a spray can? Maybe by showing people exactly how and why ‘graffiti’ is an art, not a form of vandalism. 41 plus people were shown this in full colour as they trailed the paint-speckled trousers of the friendly and legendary Mak1one on a personalised tour of graffiti in The Fringe area (with a special demo thrown in for good measure).
The vagaries of spray can valves and the vandals of self-respecting muralism were topics of heartfelt discussion in what turned out to be a lesson in the laws of expression, social responsibility and spiritual ability. Mak1one is one of many whose uplifting and eye-opening wall work points out that Graffiti plays a role in the emancipation of the self-employed creative professional as much as it does in the post-apartheid South African. Graffiti has relevance and history in both the streets of the city and the townships and it begs to be better understood. Judging from the turnout and the response to our gallery, we hope this is a dialogue that will grow and refine over time.
Creative Cape Town encourages positive expression, real questions, and coming together to understand each other(s languages).
District Six Tour of The Fringe with Joe Schaffers of The District Six Museum
“Each one teach one” is a phrase that Joe Schaffers is particularly fond of, and he proves it by practising what he preaches. His walking tours are personable and intriguing, somewhere between a tale-around-the-fire and a treasure hunt of heritage and future-making. During Creative Week, he took a distinguished group of media and business professionals on a walkabout that circled The Fringe in a series of straight lines. As a former District Six resident, Schaffers’ memories and impressions of a bygone era illustrate the ambience of a place most of will only know through the telling. Joe talks about why storytelling is important for city building.
“Once upon a time this was a vibrant hub of the city of Cape Town namely because of District Six itself and the constant movement of people between District Six and the city. We (The District Six Museum) are trying to recreate this feeling of life in the city. We have a lot of clubs and restaurants opening up here, and there’s safe parking available. This tour could help tremendously to getting people to understand what there was and what we’re trying to achieve as a tour gives them an understanding of the space.”
Creative Cape Town celebrates the validation of the past, the healing of the present and the making of the future as one and the same process.
Image: Sarah Scott (www.hallucinarium.com)
Creative week with Sound & Motion, shnit and The Flying Dutchman
You may have heard that The Fringe follows the gospel of the triple helix, a 3-in-1 approach that unites education, business and the public sector. And what more effective way to run an operation than to demonstrate to the people how to build creative brands through collaboration and resource exchange.
This is what made Sound and Motion at Creative Week the pet event for the Week’s coordinator. Combining years of excellence, Sound & Motion Studios hosted a 3-day event with two other creative groups. Sound & Motion is a respected studio in Harrington Street associated with an intimate cinema upstairs boasting some of the best sound in the city, which is why shnit International Shortfilmfestival was also involved. While musicians of repute and renown and really interesting ways with instruments played downstairs, shnit screened short films upstairs over 3 days in anticipation of their festival proper in October https://shnit.org/.
The Cape Town leg of this international film fest is hosted by local production company Be Phat Motel (responsible for the beautiful and poignant short film, Sweetheart). Performing artists included D7, a high quality a cappella group very popular with the cultured citizenry of Cape Town, and Jeremy Loops, an intrepid multitasker who tames loop stations with wild beats and loops he creates himself. The comings and goings and singing and clapping was duly watched over by the oil paintings of one Flying Dutchman, Hendrick Gerick http://www.flyingdutchmanart.com/ which lent a texture and taste to an event that met many senses and lasted many hours.
Creative Cape Town concurs. If a circle can be drawn around any 3 points in the universe, best they be the ones that will build the universe you want to live in. Happy circling!
Image: Sarah Scott (www.hallucinarium.com)
Park(ing) Day, ZA
Park(ing) day is a movement. Literally, it moves cars out of parking bays. Well, not physically, rather more strategically. By reclaiming the space otherwise occupied by inert vehicles, Park(ing) Day is an international effort to repatriate urban spaces with urban faces, rather than number plates.
It isn’t anti-car per se, it’s more pro-people, and it supports the regeneration of inner city and suburban communities by making a point through play. The Fringe had its own metre-makeover outside Oh! Café in Harrington Street on 16 September. With faux grass and real, marimba players and marvellous afternoon sun, a couple of parking bays became something between a club, a coffee spot and a chill room for the afternoon. Everyone was pleased, except perhaps someone’s shiny sedan that got sent into another street, a business made an unexpected extra turnover, and it is hoped that in due course, the extant community dwellers will feel the urge to park off and relax on the sidewalk more than just once a year.
Creative Cape Town Annual launch at ELE
Once a year a week becomes a carnival. Once a year a non-profit organisation becomes a published book. This year, they coincided with a party, combining the appeal of a major calendar event with the power of the written word (dressed in beautiful imagery by some of the city’s rising photography stars in particular the work of Sydelle Willow-Smith).
Creative Cape Town’s Annual for 2011 has a singularly inspiring message that resonates through its pages on design, development and do-it-ourselves activity in the creative industries. “Be bold, be positive and be more powerful together” it begs, through pages of essential, easy-reading insights on The Fringe, design and media and cultural tourism, all elements contributing to a competitive edge in Cape Town’s World Design Capital bid for 2014. Win or lose, look out for SPAZA coming in 2012, consider the roles of cutting edge student thinking and innovative leadership and real change, and find out about hotspots and highlights like in what is increasingly and aptly called “an inclusive city” otherwise known as Creative Cape Town.
Everybody Love Everybody, a studio of several design professionals and companies in Canterbury Street in The Fringe, is positive about the opportunity incumbent in hosting an event of this stature in its malleable cavern. Says Jesse James of ” It was a great networking opportunity and a chance for us to market ourselves to Cape Town’s elite creatives.”
Music was supplied by the dexterous Mr Mo, and food too good to be left alone for long by Kitchen. Creative Week box heads were spotted bobbing around flirting with flyers, but for the most part, they behaved.
The winner of the Goematronics Remix Competition was announced: A son of KZN, Blendor’s kwaito house twinged number, Table Mountain, won him a weeks worth of studio time at Cape Town’s Red Bull Studio and Cakewalk music software from Bothners. Blendor will be in Cape Town from the 31 October courtesy of Cape Town Tourism to take advantage of his prize.
Read the Annual online and or previous incarnations of The Creative Cape Town Annual here (scroll down) and make sure you’re invited next year by joining the mailing list.
Creative Cape Town cultivates collaboration, communication and celebration.
Cape Town Partners Forum – building together
The Cape Town Partners Forum is an important event in the calendar of Cape Town’s business minded. A regular event of the Cape Town Partnership it exposes the public with whats going in the minds of movers and shakers, government and business. The Creative Week session took place in the Fugard Theatre.
Zayd Minty of Creative Cape Town and Yehuda Raff of The Fringe took participants on a journey to understand recent planning efforts. Olivia Dyers of the Provincial Government’s Cape Catalyst initiative explained why the Fringe was important to government. Urban designer Guy Briggs and landscape architect Adam Van Niewendhuizen of Earthworks Landscape Architects painted pictures of the area’s possible future.
Creative Cape Town salutes dialogue, difference and a can-do attitude
Image: Sarah Scott (www.hallucinarium.com)
The Alley Project with Heath Nash and ThingKing
There’s a lot to be said for a space in transition, and even more to be said for undesired spaces, but sometimes it’s best said without words. Heath Nash and ThingKing are two design strengths that specialise in messages that speak through form, function, shape and colour. Put them together during Creative Week with the assistance and inspiration of the greater Creative Cape Town community, and you’ve got a statement in the making.
Which is exactly what they made. Engaging local scholars, designers and unsuspecting members of the public, they turned an Alleyway neighbouring The Bank in Harrington Street into a make-and-do market of recyclables. Who thought an old shampoo bottle could have a second coming? Who guessed that empty bleach bottle could resemble a rose? Through participatory intervention, what was once an eyesore is a now a bright statement of the intent of the area to transform itself through the hands of its citizens.
Creative Cape Town colludes that we cannot do it alone. Big up to the scholars and surprised passers-by who discovered their inner artist on the sidewalk. Especially Robert. Even if he didn’t recognise anyone afterwards…
Studio 41 Creative Exhibition and presentations
Zavick Supadog Botha considers himself cross-sector and was an early adopter of the spirit of Creative Week largely because he already exudes it naturally and professionally. An artist, a motivator and a community builder, he celebrated his new Fringe studio’s first group exhibition during Creative Week. 150 guests saw work from selected Cape Town artists and heard from speakers from vocations and individuals as diverse as wine farming (Saxenberg) to The British Consular General (a personal friend).
He feels Creative Week supported his efforts as a creative professional. “It helped me with my overall concept – Stop firing a shotgun and get single minded about your success. As a creative, Creative Week 2011 gave me a timeline to market Studio41 as a creative platform. As a creative you have to network in other fields than the one you practice in and Creative Week allowed for that.”
Creative Cape Town admits that it takes more than two to tango, actually, and that if you really want the room to spin, you’d best put forth your finest foot(work).”
The City Hall Sessions
Creative Week saw the launch of the very first in 10 City Hall Music sessions supported by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund. A sonic journey of note (with outstanding lighting and sound to boot), the first sessions was a South-South musical experience. Brazilian and Congolese duo Chico Cesar and Ray Lema, Jozi based Thandiswa Mazwai, and Cape Town’s Kesivan and the Lights wove magic over two days. Don’t the miss the next one in December.
Other central Fringe events included : exhibitions at Rococo gallery, Cape Craft and Design Institute open afternoons, Meet The Makers in The Fringe (read more here link to Caroline’s article as separate piece?) a decade of Out In Africa posters, The Fringe Photos walk by Kiki and appearances of temporary art from Paste.
Creative Cape Town is yours. So speak up and make every week Creative Week.
