Art Citichat 26 April 2002

CITICHAT 16/2002 - 26 April 2002


Art and the City

“Creativity is no longer an incidental miracle that happens occasionally in exceptionally favoured cities; in a globalised economy where no place can rest on its laurels for long, it is now a central part of the business of being a successful city.” Peter Hall, Professor of Planning at University College London and author of ‘Cities in Civilisation.”

“Planners, who are led in a certain way to admit that the town they are able to build is no longer ‘human sized’ are beginning to realise that artists can help to give to modern urban spaces ‘a taste of humanity’.” (Public Art and its relation to urban planning challenges: elements brought from the French experience)

“The muralist movement has had a major impact on the construction of recent Mexicano communities in the United States. Murals adorn a number of these communities including those in San Francisco and Chicago.” (Murals and the creation of Mexican communities in the US)

“Objective 2.1: Make Arts programmes available to everyone.

Objective 3.2: Integrate culture and the arts into the Albuquerque metro area’s overall strategy for economic development” (Cultural Plan for the City of Albuquerque)

“Four objectives followed by six strategies were identified for advancing the role of arts and culture in the environment of Downtown Washington;

• To publicly support artists, artistic traditions, culture and heritage in the community

• To create concentrated clusters of various arts uses so that they become destinations serving a wide range of audiences

• To stimulate cultural and heritage tourism for economic growth on a metropolitan, national and international level, and

• To create links between the downtown and citywide arts communities”

( The Cultural Development Corporation of the District of Columbia)

“Art creates a sense of place, it reflects a social theory about the place and displays a style that is attributed to the space. Art is often used in public places to give it character to make a place interesting, or to simply beautify it. People remember a place because of the artwork that exists in the space - the art acts as a symbol of the place” (Public Art in the Urban Landscape)

“Art should not dwell only in rarefied halls but in the places where people live and work.” (Tim Hall, “the Landscape of Urban Regeneration: Public Art”

JHB ART CITY

Saul Symanowitz is a 24 year old final year Wits University law student with B.Com and B.Com. (Hons) degrees under his belt. .Last year, as a Property Finance and Investment Tutor at Wits, Saul invited Inner City property investor Gerald Olitzki to speak at a symposium. So switched on by the opportunities that Gerald outlined, Saul turned his entrepreneurial thinking towards the inner city. I was introduced to Saul by Gerald last year when he made a number of interesting suggestions about some of the work the CJP were engaged on in the Inner City.

Towards the end of last year, with an eye to the upcoming World Summit, Saul approached the CJP again with the suggestion that consideration should be given to turning the Inner City into ‘the largest outdoor art gallery in the world’. Although the initiative might not be entirely original, the idea certainly has not been put into practice previously on a large scale in any African cities. And African art is wonderful! We discussed the proposal with senior city council officials who were enthusiastic about including the project with the city’s other World Summit initiatives. In fact the project complements an exciting programme developed by Maishe Maponya’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Department for both the World Summit and the Arts Alive Festival. Who says Joeys got no culture, bro?

The CJP brainstormed the proposal with a variety of relevant parties and a plan was formulated to (a) hold an art competition for South African artists (b) enlarge the winning submissions probably twentyfold or more (c) display them on carefully chosen bare walls of inner city buildings which (d) would promote South African arts and artists and (e) thereby stimulating an interest in local art by the broad community as well as visitors to the City in viewing and in expressing their opinions on the art submitted.

“JHB ART CITY”was born!

JHB ART CITY will turn the Johannesburg Downtown into the BIGGEST outdoor art gallery in the world

JHB ART CITY will feature paintings submitted by South African artists in a national competition PLUS specially chosen works from the country’s top corporate collections.

JHB ART CITY will display giant reproductions of original works of South African artists throughout the inner city showcasing South African art and artists, equal if not better than the best in the world.

JHB ART CITY will span the period between the August/September 2002 World Summit and the March 2003 Cricket World Cup – eight months of exposure to tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of thousands of city users.

JHB ART CITY will highlight all the inner city regeneration projects currently in progress – an approximate one-and-a-half billion rand investment - by clustering the art around the various project sites – an ‘Art Route’ will connect the projects and paintings.

JHB ART CITY will promote the visual arts as an essential ingredient of the city’s culture.

JHB ART CITY will provide an opportunity for massive public participation in the arts when the public vote for the top JHB ART CITY ARTWORK

JHB ART CITY is a unique project demonstrating support for the arts, the World Summit, the Cricket World Cup, Arts Alive and the inner city revitalisation programme.

JHB ART CITY also provides a unique marketing opportunity for local corporations to be seen as supporting the arts and the city.

JHB ART CITY will complement the many other arts initiatives being planned by the Council over the last half of the year.

JHB ART CITY is supported by Business & Arts South Africa (BASA) and is a public/private collaborative effort between the

• City of Johannesburg

• Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA)

• Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) and the

• Johannesburg Inner City Business Coalition (JICBC)

JHB ART CITY is going to be FUN!

Watch this space, regards, neil