Creative Week 

Some of the activities and exciting projects during Creative Week:

Parklets

A parklet is a small urban park, often created by replacing several under-utilized parallel parking spots with planters, trees, benches, café tables with chairs, fountains, artwork and sculptures. These are a big trend in major cities around the world.

The Fringe has teamed up with Greenpop (Bree Street) and Sound & Motion (Harrington Street) to create pop-up parklets in the city during Creative Week. Places to rest and reflect as well as to send the message (ahead of International Car Free Day on 22 September) that parking spaces could so easily be transformed into active, beautiful, community spaces.

*GreenPop are an organization that plant trees on behalf of companies and individuals that believe in making a greener, brighter tomorrow and want to improve the lives of ‘under-green’ areas. Since 2010 Greenpop has planted over 16 000 trees.

Where are Parklets happening:

105 Harrington Street, East City (outside Our Lucky Café)

133 Bree Street, Cape Town (outside Clarke’s)

When: 16 September – 23 September

 

Before I Die wall

Cape Town will be getting it’s own Before I die wall this Creative Week

‘Before I die’ will be happening on the corner of Commercial and Canterbury, and people can come write their message from today onwards.

What is the Before I Die Project?

Before I Die is an global public art project that invites people to share their hopes and dreams in public space. Originally created by Candy Chang on an abandoned house in Candy's neighbourhood in New Orleans after losing someone she loved, the project is about remembering what is important to you and creating public spaces that better reflect what matters to us as a community and as individuals.

More info about where it all started:

When Candy Chang lost someone she loved very much, the experience helped clarify her life but she struggled to maintain perspective. She wanted to know what was important to the people around her. So with help from old and new friends, she turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a giant chalkboard and stenciled it with the sentence “Before I die I want to _______.” so anyone walking by can pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space.

It was all an experiment. By the next day the wall was entirely filled out and it kept growing. Before I die I want to… sing for millions, see my daughter graduate, straddle the International Date Line, see the leaves change many times, be someone’s cavalry, live off the grid, help numerous children, hold her one more time, abandon all insecurities, be completely myself… People’s hopes and dreams made her laugh out loud, tear up, and feel consolation during her own tough times. The wall transformed a neglected space into a constructive one where we can restore perspective, remember we are not alone, and understand our neighbors in new and enlightening ways.

The project has expanded to  the Netherlands, Mexico, Australia, Portugal, Kazakhstan, and beyond.

 

WikiLovesMonuments

An exciting national photographic competition that celebrates local heritage.  It encourages people to take a lunch time stroll and click their way to some great prizes whilst capturing some beautiful images.

The international Wiki Loves Monuments Competition is organised by the Wikimedia community that created Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, and built the free media archive Wikimedia Commons. The competition runs from 1st to 30th September 2012. Wiki Loves Monuments is being launched in South Africa by the Wikimedia South Africa Chapter, in partnership with WikiAfrica (a project at the Africa Centre). There are 34 countries taking part in this global event.
www.wikilovesmonuments.co.za

The link with Creative Week is that this competition allows people to record and share their public spaces and so tell their stories and sustain their history and rich South African Heritage.

Farzanah Badsha is manager of Creative Cape Town, a programme of the Cape Town Partnership that works to communicate, facilitate and support the development of the creative and knowledge  economy in the Central City of Cape Town. She has worked as a curator and project manager on the Spier Contemporary 2010 project of the Africa Centre and before that she managed the Spier Art     collection, one of the biggest collections of contemporary South African art in the country. Her research interests focus on South African documentary photography in the 1980s.

Arguably the most creative month on Cape Town’s calendar, September is always chock-a-block with events and functions as the city shakes off her winter coat.

Hinged around the Creative Week Cape Town (15-23 September) platform, this September will see the second Architecture ZA 2012 Biennial Festival (13-16 September) and the return of the advertising, design and media award weekend; the Loeries, taking place this year at the Cape Town City Hall and CTICC from 17-23 September. The urban literary festival, Open Book, which gathers 34 international authors over 100 events, is also taking place between 20^th and 24^th September.

Creative Week Cape Town is a project of Creative Cape Town and is a platform for creative thinkers - and doers - to gather together, express, collaborate and contribute to the rich texture of Cape Town’s creative life, Creative Week is a crowd-sourced event.

Website: creativeweekct.co.za