Artistic Community Communication

With approval from the CEO of Fruit & Veg, a mural was painted on the side wall of Fruit & Veg City next to the Streetscape garden. The focus of this public art piece was to garner community support for the future development of the lot as well as promote interactions and acceptance of the street people. The “Gardens of Life” theme was chosen based on the connotations of connectedness the Tree of Life has in the community as well as to tie in the garden tended by Khulisa’s work program and the memory terrace garden explained below. A “Tree of Life” drawing was created by Lenny, a local street person who works in the garden, and painted on the wall with assistance from a local artist, Houghmordeen Jansen (Holmes). A poem written by our co-developer, Theresa Alexander, was spray-painted to the right of the image to further express the intent of the mural to foster community. To promote the community’s involvement, people were invited to add their handprints to the outer ring of the “Tree of Life” design.

A Community Day was held on Thursday Dec. 10th where members of the streetscape program, Service Dining Rooms, and the community of people parking on and traversing the lot added their hand-prints to the mural. This community day and the mural successfully sparked interest in Khulisa’s Streetscape garden as people asked about its use, its employment of street people and the plans for selling the vegetables grown there. The mural proved to be an effective tool for communication for bringing the community together.

People’s Garden Terrace

The “People’s Terrace” is a place made for the individuals of the community to celebrate the lives of those who have passed during the forced removals of the apartheid era, as well as those whose lives were lost in the streets of Cape Town. The memory place was built with the help of community members, who planted flowers in the terrace’s hollow-shaped bricks. The street community from the Canterbury Street Lot played a major role in the design, construction and implementation of the memory place, allowing us to create a space of their own that is respected and protected by the community.

We successfully hosted a Celebration Day on December 15th, where people spoke about someone they had lost and planted a flower in their memory. A great number of members of the street community which heartfeltly picked flowers that would represent each person’s life. Also, the event attracted various community members; from CCID members to workers from surrounding businesses giving positive feedback regarding our improvement efforts and proposed future changes for the further development of the lot.

Proposal

While we left behind tangible outcomes such as the mural and memorial, our team, in collaboration with our co-developers, brainstormed many other ideas for the future. To harness these ideas, we created a well rounded, visual proposal that provides a deep understanding of the lot’s current dynamics. The intended audience for the proposal is any person or organization that wishes to help improve the lives of the street community on the lot and improve the area as a whole. However, more specifically, the proposal was prepared to foster discussion among key stakeholders, like Khulisa Social Solutions, the District Six Trust, the City of Cape Town, local businesses and organizations and the street community itself in creating a more aesthetically pleasing, functional and inclusive space for all who use the area, especially the street people. With an easy to-read, visually oriented layout, the proposal is a set of additional puzzle-piece-like ideas and options so the benefactor can clearly see suggestions on how to assist the Canterbury Street Lot. We believe the proposal contains reachable goals brainstormed by our co-developers and the WPI team that can be implemented over time. To organize our proposal, we divided the lot into smaller, easy to analyze sections. By focusing on specific areas, we highlighted its current dynamics and provided ideas for its further development. To learn more about how we accomplished this, please visit the objectives page.

Canterbury Street Lot’s model divided into various sections

Canterbury Street Lot divided into micro-spaces