WORDS Malibongwe Tyilo
Home to Design Indaba, the South African National Art Gallery and soon to be home to Africa’s first Museum of Contemporary Art, Cape Town is well known across the country as a creative hub. A view further reinforced by the city’s current designation as World Design Capital 2014.
Once a year, the city hosts Creative Week Cape Town, an initiative driven by the Cape Town Partnership, “a non-profit organisation that brings people together around common goals for Cape Town’s transformation.”
The week, which runs from the 13th to the 21st of September 2014, is organised around a central theme: Start Where You Are. “It’s a simple statement that encourages people to make a change within their surroundings, without waiting for instruction or the ‘right’ time. To simply start where you are, use what you have, and make what you can, holds the ultimate transformative power within our communities and ourselves. We aim to celebrate everyday creativity and champion the role the creative sector has in affecting change within our city,” says Cape Town Partnership CEO, Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana.
The programme is made up of a diverse calendar of events, including exhibitions, films, dialogues, parties, and other gatherings. It also runs alongside the South African advertising industry’s Loeries Awards week in Cape Town. There’ll certainly be no shortage of opportunities for inspired shoulder rubbing and event hopping throughout the week.
The great news is that the programme is still open for submissions and will be open until Friday the 12th of September. It’s not just about the more obvious creative efforts like artists and photographers either; agents, charities, clubs, and educators are all encouraged to submit events. Should you want to register your event, just visit the Creative Week website, and submit your event or project into one of their six categories: Learn, Play, Move, See, Do and Hear.
They’ll also be running an Instagram competition. All you need to do is submit pics that best represent creativity in the Mother City. Just use #creativeweek and say where the pic was taken.
Creative Week Cape Town
13– 21 September
