Communities unite in art for social justice

DIAKONIA held a vine making workshop on Saturday 3 August in preparation for the Diakonia Social Justice Season Festival.

Volunteers from around the city as well as nearby suburbs spent the morning hours enjoying a fun day of learning a new skill, meeting great people, and making art from recycled plastic.

“It has been such an exciting morning, we were happy to see so many people come through today,” said Diakonia’s Karen Read.

Vallery Gounden and her young daughter, Alexer enjoyed the morning immensely, especially learning how to make art of of something as simple as an ice cream container.

The idea is to have dramatic, huge public artwork vines decorating the inner city, starting at the Diakonia Centre in October, in time for the Diakonia Social Justice Season Festival and this was the first of many workshops that will see ordinary people join artists from Umcebo Design as they make components for giant vines out of empty ice-cream containers.

Diakonia Council of Churches, which has been working for a transformed society for 37 years , is running a Social Justice Season later in the year looking at Churches as Life Affirming Communities. They are encouraging parishes and individuals to come along and participate.

“In 1985 the late Archbishop Denis Hurley proposed an annual Social Justice Season. For a month or so every year, the local churches would concentrate their attention on one social issue. Through the hymns, readings and prayers of the liturgy, through sermons and exposure programmes the church’s energies would be galvanised for practical social action. The most powerful way, he suggested, of establishing a strong tradition of social justice activism in the churches is to encourage parishes to form small groups that would work together on these issues,” said Nomabelu Mvambo-Dandala, Executive Director of Diakonia Council of Churches.

“A well travelled biblical image is that of the vine-keeper pruning the vines, removing the deadwood so that the available nourishment will be focused on the remaining productive branches. Using this image as a starting point, our Social Justice Festival, planned for October this year, will be called The Vines Social Justice Festival. What we envisage is that the local congregations through their small study groups will prepare to showcase their social justice activities and projects at the Diakonia Centre during their Social Justice Festival,” continued Mvambo-Dandala.

For more information about the Social Justice Season, contact Diakonia on 031 310 3500 or email Karen.Read@diakonia.org.za.