Local creatives for #ArtMyJozi

Over the past two months, the Louis Botha and Empire/Perth development corridors came alive with multidisciplinary social activations and creative design workshops, thanks to the Johannesburg Development Agency.

The agency held a rich and multi-layered exhibition on 7 October at the Bus Factory in Newtown to enable Joburg residents to engage with a critique in the various creative outcomes from the ArtMyJozi place-making through art creative campaign.

ArtMyJozi is an initiative by the agency and it is also part of its Public Art Programme strategically aimed at local creatives and residents. The initiative is aimed at the artists of Norwood and Orange Grove to collaborate on special performances, events and installations designed to unearth and express new ideas about local place-making through community participation, according to a statement issued by JDA.

In the statement, the agency said the development of the ArtMyJozi social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were complemented by an on-the-ground poster campaign, provoking audience attendance and engagement.

The programme is also complemented by a special media crew of poets, photographers and filmmakers who collected special stories in and around the sites of activation.

“As with so many powerful, creative interventions in the public realm, large and small; shared stories about their meaning sustains their communal value and social import,” read the statement.

“Myriad local stories, combined with multiple modes of documentation and design translation gave artists an opportunity to comprehend various opportunities for artistic works in the various development areas within the corridors.”

At the exhibition, artists demonstrated a range of artistic treatments for various existing buildings and sites, to new building projects within the development corridors.

“The exhibition is a revelation and celebration of an intensive process-based creative experimentation, made possible by numerous local participants, who willingly gave of their time and creative energy, to translate the unique characteristics of their neighbourhoods,” read the statement.

“Hence the creative propositions that emerged in the exhibition fly in the face of elevating individual artistic talent in favour of a collective voice of place, rich in threads of common lived experience, as much as complex social diversity and expression.”

There were also walkabouts and evaluation of the work at the showcase event and the exhibition was open to the public on 6 and 9 October.

Details: JDA 011 688 7851.

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