August 30th, 2010
— Xanele van Rensburg
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Laetitia Petela is a single mom. She supports her two kids as well as her family in Eastern Cape, with a half day, office cleaning job.
Her dream is to run her own creche. She helped us paint Siyakhula creche in Kayamandi and we then put her in contact with someone who is helping her to start-up her own creche. She has done her creche training and is very excited and ready to start. She will continue working at the office.
Her sister will run the creche in the morning and in the afternoon she will take over.
Unfortunately she will not receive a free building, unless she quits her morning job. Laetitia’s loyalty does not allow for this. But she needs the extra income that the creche will generate. AND neither the creche nor the office job generates enough income on it’s own. She needs R3000 in order to buy the creche building herself. Which will then allow her to start her creche.
If you are interested to make a contribution towards this cause, please email xvanrensburg@gmail.com for more information.
Jonathan Nkala
Playwright, actor, poet - will be performing his autobiographical one-man play, The Crossing, at New Africa Theatre this week, 3 and 4 September. Written by Jonathan and directed by Bo Petersen, it is his story of how he left the small village of Mbizo in Zimbabwe as an economic refugee, crossed the border on foot, lived on the street and eventually built a life for himself. Payment at the door but booking essential.
Performances:
2 September 7:30 pm (SOLDOUT due to popular demand)
3 September 7:30pm
4 September 3pm & 7:30pm
Tickets:
- R60 at the door
- R40 Students
- Discount for block bookings
Contact:
Ian Bruce at 073 643 4662
Bo Petersen at 082 0800 518
Jonathan has been sponsored by a drama festival to visit the USA at the beginning of October to tour the country with The Crossing. While he’s there he wants to take the opportunity to sell his play (the book version) and the wire-and-bead figurines he sells on Camps Bay beach for a living. However, he doesn’t have money for materials as this has gone to visas etc, which will only be reimbursed upon arrival.
Jonathan needs R1500 for the materials, which he will pay back upon his return at the end of October. If anyone would like to donate/loan of any part of that amount, even if just R100, please email kiraschlesinger@gmail.com for Jonathan’s bank details.
We are very excited to announce that Write on Africa’s Ricky Lee Gordon and Xanele van Rensburg will soon be embarking on a mission to Swaziland. The aim of our travels is to create a better communication strategy for a wonderful organization named Pact.
Pact’s mission is: “to build empowered communities, effective governments and responsible private institutions that give people an opportunity for a better life.”
Write on Africa has been hard at work on the Greenpop infinitive together with fellow creative activist Misha Teasdale who also worked on 1000 Drawings.
We love Misha and we love him even more for driving this project.
On Saturday 31st July, a enthusiastic group of volunteers turned up to help paint Pozie crehce. This has been the smallest creche we’ve painted to date, but the impact that colour makes is none the less massive. The problem with most creches in Kayamandi is that they don’t advertise, and their buildings are not recognizable as creches, thus by painting it, it also serves the purpose of economic empowerment for the teacher. As well as providing the children with an imaginative environment to be taught in.
This creche together with another 10 still to do has been funded by the Adidas Originals Mark Gonzales auction currently happening through /A WORDOFART
See more here and make a bid,every R1000 we raise pays for a creche or 2 :)
http://www.a-word-of-art.co.za/exhibitions/mark-gonzales-silent-bid-at-three-stories-awoa/
(A new initiative we love and are helping with from a creative side of things.)
See here: http://greenpop.org/
A WORDOFART studio was given a new lease on life this weekend,we hosted 35 kids from Masi Pumalenga kids community program,
With 15 dedicated volunteers the day was so simply beautifully easy.
The kids got creative and painted the posters needed to promote GREENPOP and then we served lunch and finished off with a walk in Newlands forest.
This was the prototype/pilot TREEHOUSE day ,but watch out for more as we hope to do them as weekly as possible.
Let us know if you wanna help :)
(There is another this coming Sat the 7th,so just let us know if you wanna help)
Our second creche in the painting creches series was completed on July 3rd. The creche was designed by Linsey Levendall according to a theme chosen by Sivuyile’s head teacher. The theme that was decided on was “happy local wild animals”. By the end of the day the building was unrecognizably bright. The children are ecstatic about their new creche.
A special thank you to all the volunteers and community members who, by working together, made this project a success!
We finally started to trace the outlines of Siyakhula creche, in preparation for the big painting day we had on 16th July. Armed with a mac, a projector and some permanent markers we successfully finished it in one evening.
Saturday came, and it was a massive success. Fifteen volunteers gave it their all and we finished painting Siyakhula in one day. What was quite extraordinary was the interaction between the kids, the volunteers, and the community. Everyone had a blast! It is truly amazing what can be achieved in one day and to finally see everything coming to life. Saturday morning Siyakhula blended in with all the neighbouring buildings. Saturday evening came and Siyakhula was completely transformed.
It is remarkably rewarding to see the children’s reactions to the images on the walls. I feel privileged to have been involved in the lives of Mable, and the other people at Siyakhula.
Many thanks goes out to everyone who helped make this project a success!
A few weeks ago, I visited Sivuyile (happiness) creche, just down the road from Siyakhula creche. There I met Dorothy, teacher and owner of Sivuyile. She was ecstatic about the prospect of her creche being transformed/ repainted/ redesigned.
We are proud to present our first collaboration in the painting creches project with illustrator/designer Linsey Levendall.
Dorothy and I had a long discussion about the essence of the creche, what is unique to the creche and the environment. From our discussion it was obvious that something both Dorothy and the children find fascinating is wild animals. Thus we decided the theme for her creche would be “happy local wild animals”. Educational material to accompany this theme has many possibilities.
A brief was set up and sent to Linsey… the result in the form of a proposal can be seen below. We think Linsey did a superb job in creating a friendly design that will surely have a remaining positive effect on the children and the environment.
I’m Xanele van Rensburg: creative activist and newly appointed ambassador for Write on Africa.
Introducing a new project: Painting Creches
See-Saw-Do is an initiative I’ve started driven by an inherent love and passion for children. The focus is kept on stimulating creative and mental growth in young minds.
The first branch of the project is repainting creches. Together with Write on Africa and sponsored by Plascon, the aim of this project is to encourage creatitivy and provide an imaginative environment for children by repainting the exterior of each creche with imagery relevant to the creche and its surrounding environment as to portray the unique qualities of each creche. The exterior of the creche should match the mental and creative stimulation that happens inside the creche.
The first creche to be repainted, Siyakhula creche, is run by Mable (mother, teacher and chef) and is situated in Kayamandi, Stellenbosch. Painting will start in June. See proposal below:
Watch this space for more updates and some collaborative work. The next creche will feature designer/illustrator Linsey Levendall from Bison.
Faith47 recently participated in ARTotale which took place in Lueneburg, a tiny old town in northern Germany. The ARTotale is initiated by Rik Reinking & the Leuphana University, it invited more than 35 international artists.
For pictures of the project please visit http://just.ekosystem.org/gallery/0/gallery.html
Then Faith was off to Brussels for her show Epitaph:
9 Artists painted live at “Earth dance festival” this weekend to promote “1000 drawings”
click image to enlarge.
see Projects and Initiatives for more pics and info:
We are collaborating on a new project.
Papergirl is an art project which, in the style of american paperboys, distributes rolled art pieces by bicycle to random passers-by in the streets. It consists of an exhibition, the action (distribution of the art) and a party.
Submissions now open. http://www.papergirl-sa.com/
The public participation process is now over.
We have handed in our submission and look forward to a positive result:. We will have an opportunity to give a visual presentation to the City of Cape Town on the 3rd of November.
Including in our proposal was the petition signed by over 2000 people,
Endorsements and letters of support from:
Design Indaba-Ravi Naidoo VANSA-Peter Hayes FXI-Freedom of Expression Institute
Creative Cape Town-Zayd Minty
Heart -Peter Shrimpton
Human Rights Media Centre.
We recently traveled to the Transkei to paint murals in poor and rural areas as a case study supported by the Scrutanise campaign.
See more in the New TRAVELS section.
