Rooted

I was so happy to be a part of one of the many World Design Capital evenings on Tuesday at Assembly. The evening was magnificent to say the least and so inspirational. We even got yummy soup and rolls! Perfect for the cold winters eve.

Raavi Naido launched his new competition called Your Street {link} What this basically entails is you finding a street in Cape Town, any street, and changing or adding something to it that will improve it for everyone on or around that street. The prize money is R50 000 which you can use to make your initiative a reality. On top of that Raavi announced on Tuesday night that he will add R100 000 to that if you have the best idea and can find other means of funding the project, Luyanda Mpahlwa {MMA Architects} then jumped up and added another R50 000! ...XYZ then added R50 000 worth of consultation hours and later on added ANOTHER R50 000 cash! So as far as I know the prize money is now at R250 000 cash and R50 000 in hours! It was so amazing to see how designers are working to make a difference in Cape Town, South Africa, Africa and the world. Absolutely inspiring.

We were all introduced to something called Pecha Kutcha, {meaning chit chat} a presentation form in which each presenter gets 20 slides of 20 seconds long, each. Guest presenters included Thulari Monareng, owner of Fashion Deli on Long street and a very inspirational business women, with great ideas for the future. Another was a girl called Yolandi Schreuder who designed a school desk {Baja} for less privileged areas, made from Xanita board and is multi-functional. ...XYZ introduced their Design With Africa project, but what was my favourite presentation and I think this is a great initiative, was Velokhaya... a BMX hub/community centre done by ThingKing, two young guys doing something amazing in Khayelitsha. You can read more about all of these brilliant people by clicking on the links.

At the end of the evening I was so inspired, I wanted to change and fix the world! Which I believe is very much achievable if we all do our little part. Just do something, an idea is only worth something once it becomes a reality, in your head it doesn't mean much to anyone... So just make it happen!