Creative Cape Town

Imagine City Hall is a citizen activation programme: its aim is to draw support for the development of the Cape Town City Hall as a dedicated cultural venue. The space should be accessible to all the people of Cape Town, and should forward the broader arts and heritage of the city and the continent.

Imagine City Hall is driven by The Africa Centre, Creative Cape Town and Cape MIC

The Cape Town City Hall is established in the minds of most Cape Town citizens as a cultural venue with its active concerts and it’s Central Library (from 1979 – 2009). Since the Library moved to its slick new space in the Drill Hall next to the City Hall last year, the City Hall has more than 2 000 sq metres of space empty. This, and the City Hall’s increasingly dilapidated state since the late 80s, has provided an opportunity to re-imagine and re-position the venue.

Various initiatives have attempted to lobby the City to turn the City Hall into a viable cultural facility; however none have come to fruition in recent years. The most recent of these (since 1996) is a series of interventions by the Cape Town Partnership which includes lobbying government, funding research, developing a business plan and funding proposals, and establishing a Section 21 (with the mayors support) to manage and redevelop it. With the Africa Centre planning to use the venue for the Spier Contemporary from March – May 2010 for its major South African Contemporary art show thereby effectively repositioning the space, the opportunity has arisen to reinvigorate the project with citizen engagement. The key aim of such an engagement is to garner support for the City Hall as dedicated premier cultural venue for all Capetonians. As a result Imagine City Hall was born as an idea between the Africa Centre, Creative Cape Town and Cape MIC.

Please read our explanation of Imagine City Hall and where it comes from as a process here, including access to business plans and related documents.

If you support this initiative we ask you to please register your support for Imagine City Hall on our website or on the Facebook group we have created.

If you think you belong in this space, tell us why and tell us what you can bring to it?

If you would like to host an event at the City Hall during the Spier Contemporary please contact Matthew Skade at matthewn@africacentre.net. A project space has been created with guidelines for events and Spier is looking for your involvement during between 13 March and mid May.