Letter from Joburg 9 – A Big One

Loads to report on this post, busy as usual.  We made our third intervention this Wednesday, at the Greenhouse project, one the edge of Joubert Park. ‘Grow the Nation’ (we didn’t use a title, but that fits nicely), was a series of activities, based in the Greenhouse space, including their half-built ‘Earth House’, completely constructed with reclaimed and sustainable materials.

First we enticed people in from the park and off the street using a few strategies.  We constructed a ‘string slide’ from the first floor of the Earth House to a lampost in the park.  We attached airmail envelopes, with ‘open me please’  and ‘for you’ in english and Zulu on the covers, and a lipstick kiss on the back.  Inside was a letter telling the reader to follow the chalk arrows on the floor and ‘you never know what you may find’.  Loads more people took the letters than we expected and we soon had as many people as we could manage, some even ran from the park! In the entrance gate Kyla and Anthea, in their best flowery swimsuits, were ‘taking tea’ and would lead participants to the first activity.  Here’s some photographs (all photos by Bethule Nkiwane and  Tawedzerwa Zhou)

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When they came into the ground floor of the Earth House, they were met with Lee and Sandra, who explained they were from the UK and needed help navigating Joburg.  So we asked them to make us a map, putting on where they live, work, play and where were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ places – and putting on routes and journeys they take.  People were more than happy to comply, concentrating really hard and often spending 15-20 minutes on their maps.  We had a great mix of people attending, around 50 adults and 50 young people during the afternoon. More photographs:

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After they had completed their map, we took them up the (rather dangerous) stairs to the first floor of the Earth House.  Here they were confronted with a huge map of our square mile, covering most of the floor of the building (thanks to Si and Ben). We asked them to take off their shoes and then photographed them standing on the map at the place where they live. and then asked them to fill in details of important (to them) places and buildings. It made a beautiful meditative place, again people were concentrating very hard and silently walking round this massive map of their inner city and marking significant places.  Even more photos:

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After this we led them around the Greenhouse yard, where Kyla and Doreen were running an ‘adopt a plant’ workshop.  they showed people how to make pots out of recycled coke bottles, then how to plant and look after a seedling (mostly vegetables and tomatoes).  we asked them to bring their plant back to us next Sunday (1st), when we are having an event inside Johannesburg Art Gallery, showing all the work and documentation to date, as well as launching our ‘I Heart Hillbrow’ postcards.  Even, even more photos:

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The event was a huge success and we ran out of seedlings (naievely thinking 100 would be enough.  We also asked people to come back next Wednesday, when we will be back in Joubert Park, this time running workshops mapping the biodiversity of the area, getting people to draw their favourite plants and trees and then adding them to the huge map in the gallery.

We have also been busy on other things.  We have taught students in Soweto and Alexandra townships, with Anthea.  Both groups are attending media, marketing and  design courses – not our usual thing, you might think, but these students are very different from the ones we are used to in the UK.  Whilst still wanted to ‘get on’ in life, there is a real sense that these young people also want to put back into their communities. They clearly enjoyed working with us and were a joy to work with.  The Soweto class even gave us an impromptu performance of spoken word and song at the end of class, which was a pleasure and an honour.  We’re taking the weekend off for a little safari, so expect some photographs of beasties next week!