The Council Chambers

What an intense few days! We arrived in Kwa Thema this morning after getting no more than 2 hours sleep each. Our group had worked really hard for this presentation, our first marked piece, and we had very little time to pull it off. The presentation was in the council chamber which we finally managed to occupy after about an hour of running around looking for a suitable space. We pinned up our individual, paired and group presentations and then waited for the other groups to arrive. After some time, a huge audience had formed, and we were finally ready to start the talk. It was very successful, our plan for the beer hall seemed to have been widely accepted by the attending community representatives, who often didn’t seem to quite grasp our intentions. Tseleng was very good at explaining the fact that we are there to kick start the community into action, our small interventions should be seen as what is possible for a community to create, learn from and grow. It was amazing how many ideas emerged from the audience about the beer hall, all because we shone a spotlight on it. The chess park also made a successful presentation. Our paired groups went generally well, with Ahaka and mine seeming to grab the most criticism. I’m still very happy with the idea we proposed, and it was worked through and made presentable in the same two days in which we had to complete our group and individual presentations. We ran out of time and the individuals never happened, a few hours more sleep seemed to be running away laughing. I thoroughly enjoyed the process which we went through at the talk today, it seemed really constructive.

Back at our beer hall site, the place is still an awful mess. It’s incredibly disheartening to find it in such a state every time we visit. We drove around the hot township sticking up the newspapers in the afternoon. This next week will involve lots of planning and hopefully we will get numerous substantial sponsorship deals. The flat bar for our balustrade alone, came in over our R10 000 budget! Now it’s time to get building, I really hope this all works out.

Interview Sound Clips:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Gift (Phone booth, snack container) - interview about container

Arthur (Cell C) - interview about container

Dumisani (Vodacom) - interview about container

Angie (Stan's)- interview about container