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 programme posits that 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 empty sitting empty and unused. This, and the City Hall’s increasingly dilapidated state since the late 80s, have 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 having used the venue for the Spier Contemporary from March – May 2010 for its major South African Contemporary art show, the opportunity was given to reposition the space and to reinvigorate the project with citizen engagement.  More than 20 000 people visited the venue for the exhibition and for a music series run by Cape Mic and the response to the venue was overwhelmingly positive.   However the opportunity to leverage this support was lost when the City Hall was closed to the general public and turned into a media centre and VIP hospitality space for the 2010 World Cup.  Much of the infrastructure for The City Hall to be used for exhibitions was removed. As a result these developments many of the improvements made by the Spier Contemporary were lost.  Although a number of exhibitions and events are still planned for the venue – there is unfortunately no marketing strategy to take advantage of these for city positioning –  systems to manage it are still poor and there is limited funds to invest it its maintenance and development.

The key aim of continuing citizen engagement is to garner support for the City Hall as dedicated premier cultural venue for all Capetonians – one that works for all. It is aimed at building a local support base to ensure the venue is improved and used better for cultural ends.  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.

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.