Kites

On Friday we agreed to Hannah’s proposal that the initial project sites be reduced to two big projects, the beerhall and the chess park, with five small interventions (connected to our research areas) like acupuncture points along the route between. We formed two groups of five and five groups of two. I was glad to have got to be in the beerhall team as the chess park seems to be very restricted by pre-existing ideas and wishes. Our visit today was, all in all, productive. Our ideas are beginning to emerge quite fast but the practicalities – which we haven’t even begun to consider properly – are daunting. There’s a sense that our intervention might end up being insignificant and not making any impact or difference. Khula and two of the volunteers measured up the building very efficiently so we should be able to start sketching our ideas to scale.

At the end of the afternoon the group sat on the upper level in the sun and talked through ideas, though people were somewhat reticent. One thing I think we are agreed on is that the structure should, to as great a degree as possible, retain its permeability. This goes against Tseleng’s ideas for securing the ground floor, which is tricky because he is clearly deeply invested in the building, but we probably wouldn’t have had the budget for roller shutter doors there anyway.

We had a lovely time with the small boys who were flying kites in the park and who moved onto the structure while we were talking. Jabu, who had an amazing kite made of a black dustbin bag, was inveigled – with Wandile translating - into helping us somehow incorporate kites into the launch – we thought perhaps we could have a kite building workshop and fly hundreds of kites from the building. Then Guy videoed the group of boys ‘jiving’! Still not sure whether we should be roofing a portion or keeping the building open to the sky entirely.