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. For 3 decades (since 1979) it has been used as the City Library and from its early days was used as music venue. The auditorium has been connected strongly with symphonic music and the venue is associated with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra (who most often perform on Thursdays). In addition the venue has hosted Malay Choir competitions, school bands, variety shows, contemporary music and more. In recent years it has hosted contemporary African music, jazz as well as hip hop events.

The City Hall has a long history and is over 100 years old (officially inaugurated in 1905), it was built as the centre of city administration and as the seat of the Mayor of Cape Town. This function is now based at the Civic Centre (constructed in the 1970s) on the Foreshore.

Since the Library moved to its slick new space in the Drill Hall next to the City Hall in 2009, the City Hall has had more than 2 000 sq metres of space empty. This, and its increasingly dilapidated state, has provided an opportunity to re-imagine and re-position the venue.

There have been various attempts at re-making the City Hall in recent years. About a decade back the venue had a through restoration to its façade (1987 – 1998). However funds to do an internal renovation were lacking at that time. There were various proposals made by different interests groups to use the venue as a cultural space and at one time the city gave space to various cultural institutions to be based there – such as the Carnival Association and Abdullah Ibrahim’s M7. However there was no clear long term vision and many of the organizations using the venue had their own internal politics and had severe funding issues that prevented them from creating a long term plan. Most moved out. By 2007 only a city department dealing with Parks and Recreation was based in a few spaces and the traffic courts took the ground floor. By this time the Library had received a grant that enabled it to move out to the Drill Hall.

In the meantime, the once grand City Hall was in a state of decline, valuable fixtures were being stolen, the toilets needed maintenance and generally it was in a poor state.

In 2006 the Cape Town Partnership (CTP) lobbied the city to begin a process of developing a vision and business plan for the City Hall. CTP was acting in terms of its mandate to develop and promote the central city and recognized the City Hall as a key and iconic facility in the central city, taking into account its central position near a major transport nexus and the proximity and connection it has with the Grand Parade and Castle. Towards this end the CTP, with City support, put out a limited tender to conduct the development of this business plan. Ochre Communication which had done the plans for the Old Fort at Constitution Hill was employed to do this and developed a plan. However while the plan was underpinned by good research, the business plan depended too much on a grant from government. Since the City of Cape Town was under pressure to deliver on basic services and needs, this was seen to be an unworkable option – the City was looking for an investor of some sort. In response the Cape Town Partnership and the Cape Town Heritage Trust put forward a proposal to set up a Section 21 to develop the space, initially proposing raising R40 Million towards that end from banks. The Mayor Helen Zille welcomed the setting up a section 21 to redevelop the city and the proposed plan at a press conference in February 2008. The City began working with the CTP and CTHT in a special mayoral committee which speedily drove the project forward and ensured all parties based at the City Hall found common ground. On developing the final business plan, the now established Section 21 realized that the initial financial model was flawed and proposed a more incremental process that required a three year experimental phase underpinned by strong content, with organizations contributing rental to cover some of the extensive costs of managing a professionally run space. To this end a new business plan drawing on the Ochre research and revised plans (including input from users of the space) was produced. In addition CTP produced a proposal for the National Lottery to further the idea of a music focus in the City Hall.

Contributing more than R500 000 to the process in total since 2006, the CTP was distressed that the City in early 2009 dismissed the business plan outright based on some concerns inside the municipality. The City’s key concerns are – accessibility for all to use it as a facility (especially the less advantaged in our city), protection of the built heritage of the City Hall, a concern about the displacement of municipal use (the traffic courts in particular and the costs of re-housing these), uncertainty about the revenue model proposed and an unhappiness of losing control of what is considered a key city property to commercial forces or handing it over to an outside structure. The City thus decided to “take back the process”. To date there has still not been a plan of action from the city. However the city has done five important things:

1. Agreed to put some renovation budget to much needed work on some of the toilets in the auditorium space in particular.
2. Produced a “Preliminary Heritage Appraisal for the Future Use and Restoration of the City Hall” (April 2009). This document puts forward a traditional built environment conservation approach and includes key heritage considerations.
3. Given permission for the Spier Contemporary to use the City Hall for its biennale exhibition of South African Contemporary Art. The usage of the space by the Spier Contemporary provided a significant moment to reposition the venue as a cultural facility. The space was first proposed to them by Cape Town Partnership’s Creative Cape Town.
4. Allowed other projects the use the space for exhibitions and events
5. Began a long term process to reinvent the space and a short term use plan (3 years) by a set of “cultural tenants”

The use of the space by the Spier Contemporary 2010 dovetailed conveniently time wise with the development of the ECDI. ECDI is a project which has a long genesis arising from the East City Development Conference of 2004 – it also picked up on such spaces as the City Hall as a key facility in the area.

In 2009 the CTP’s Creative Cape Town with a range of stakeholders developed the East City Design Initiative (ECDI) project which is in 2010 being supported by the Provincial Government of the Western Cape as a Cape Catalyst Project. It also has the blessings of the Mayco of the City. This proposal provides a basis for rethinking a number of state owned East City facilities in pursuit of this vision:

The East City Design Initiative will result in the premier African environment for design innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship being developed in the Cape Town Central City within the next 10 years. It will showcase design excellence, incubate emerging talent, and enable new innovations to develop.

“The actual and virtual space created by the initiatives provide an environment for business, the academy, the non-profit sector and government to interact in ways that develop design in the city, province, nationally and Africa wide. Its impact locally and nationally would lead to the improvement in the quality of life, improved economic growth, sustainable solutions, and a more inclusive society.”

Vision developed in 2009 by the ECDI Founding Stakeholders

The Grand Parade received a timely makeover for 2010 and the Fifa Fan Park made the venue known globally as it was featured on countless times on televisions around the world.

The huge success of the Spier Contemporary 2010 exhibition from March – May 2010 saw more than 20 000 people visited the venue for the exhibition and for a music series run by Cape Mic.  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 removed. As a result these developments many of the gains 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 are limited funds to invest it its maintenance and development.

There are now demands on the City Hall to play an ongoing function as an events space. But what about its long term vision; who supported it; can aspects of the business plan be rescued; can the municipality be mobilized to act swiftly in the interests of the city as a whole in a visionary way?

The scene was now set for Imagine City Hall

Where to now?

We want to argue City Hall has been a cultural venue in the minds of most Capetonians for many years – (as well as a place to pay traffic fines currently) and now is the time to make it a venue that is dedicated to cultural development: a space that redefines our city culturally in relation to our country and our continent – musically, visually and more; a space that reflects our history and our memory as well as our wishes and dreams.

The business plan (Feb 2009) suggests, drawing on the experience of other cultural facilities, that a great deal of investment is not necessary in the first instance for turning a venue into a space that serves the needs of a city culturally. What is needed is a support of and trust in great artists, whose logic adds not only content, but also has the potential to physically regenerate spaces creatively and cheaply. Once this is done, audiences follow. Thereafter, learning from the way the centre works will result in the space being re-configured to support the emergence of a long term plan, followed soon enough by money for development through grants (like the National Lotteries), sponsorships and donations by philanthropists.

At the core of a good space is 1. Solid content with quality and integrity; 2. Long term vision supported by strong political will; 3. Firm management which tempers a creative early phase with a more systematic, long term approach. This approach would priorities excellence in content, supported by diversified revenue streams.

Can the learnings made by the Spier Contemporary be used to inform a better use of the space?  What is the best way the venue could and should be used for?  Cultural or other?

If you would like to make comments or register your support for Imagine City Hall either comments below or on the Facebook group we have created.

Download more information:

• City Hall Business Plan with Financials
• City Hall Music Series Proposal

If you would like to host an event or exhibition at the City Hall please contact the City of Cape Town:  For events and exhibitions contact Cynthia Court at Cynthia.Court@capetown.gov.za.  To use the auditorium please contact Reuben Christian Rueben.Christian@capetown.gov.za.  There are a set of fixed tariffs to use the auditorium.  It is extremely well priced and accessible to all.