In August 2014, FASHIONCLASH team members & designers Nawie Kuiper and Branko Popovic took part in a very special project in Langa township (Cape Town - South Africa).
Project background
‘In Performance - Building a Theater’
The starting point of the project is the development of a children's theatre in Langa and Cape Town World Design Capital 2014.
Project was supported by Creative Industries Fund NL.
In a cooperation of the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Cape Town, the architectural faculties of RWTH Aachen (DE), PBSA Düsseldorf (DE) Georgia Tech Atlanta (US), the support of UCT (SA) and the local community, a children's theatre is being built in the township of Langa, Cape Town. The building is mainly built by architectural students and local participants with a completion date of October 2014.
During Cape Town's hosting of the World Design Capital 2014, Langa has been chosen as one of the project areas of the city. The focus was on the theatre as key design project as well as a venue for events during the Design festival. Therefore the project ‘In Performance - Building Theater’ links the process of building to the anticipated utilization of the space. Before the official opening of the theatre, a performance developed through an interdisciplinary collaboration between architects, textile as well as fashion designers and performers as representatives for the future users, will thoroughly explore the endless possibilities of the space and structure.
FASHIONCLASH & Happy Feet Youth Project
Shortly after our arrival we went to visit the children of the Happy Feet Youth Project in their own neighborhood and their tiny dance space. This was truly inspiring and touching to be surrounded with so much energy and positive vibes in a place where dreams seems to be far away. The kids also performed for us to show us some of their dances and moves, and sure they can dance! Although Cape Town is a marvelous city with many stunning nature attractions visiting Happy Feet was the highlight so far.
In the following days we managed to do quite a lot; starting with installing of our workspace in Guga 'S Thebe. Furthermore we visited various companies who where so generous to contribute in the project. Show Tex will provide us with fabrics, Cape Town Sewing with sewing machines, Aga with sewing yarns and so on. People are friendly and willing to help! Thanks to all the help and materials we were able to start designing and making prototypes for the costumes and to organize a workshop in the connection to Open Design Festival in the weekend of 16 and 17 of August.
In the weekend of 16 and 17 August, the new 'in the making' theatre at Guga S'Thebe was transformend into a playground for various disciplines. In connection to Open Design Festival various activities were organized including workshops by Saskia Oidtmann, Jolijn Fiddelaers (IXX) and FASHIONCLASH. The workshops involved kids of the Happy Feet Youth Project. All kids were given the opportunity to design and create their own 'vest' that carried Happy Feel logo. Although it was an intense experience to take care of a large group of excited kids. However, the result was more than we could hope for and there are now 45 unique vests. It was also great to see the potential of the theatre for the Langa community.
After the this weekends our focus went on development of the costumes and this went quite well within the short period of time. We very much enjoyed working in our pop-up studio in Guga and all the social encounters that happened along the way.
Before departure we handed over our work, costumes prototypes and patterns, to local sewer Zola. She will take care of production of 43 outfits for boys and girls of Happy Feet. The costumes are meant to be worn by Happy Feet dancers and on display end of September during the Fringe Festival. Saskia Oidtmann developed choreography for this presentation. The costumes we designed are resulting in two outfits. For the girls in a fabric with a African print and for the boys and smaller kids an overall 'Wanzi'. These overalls are in blue or yellow. In the process we have included wishes of the children. For the boys overalls we where inspired by Langa street sty les where we noticed that hoodies where popular so we created an overall with a hoodies. For the girls we where looking for a more feminine look and they where in love with the African fabric so that explains the choice.
Happy Feet Youth Project performance and costumes where presented during the Fringe Festival in Cape Town in September 2014.
Read more about the FASHIONCLASH in Cape Town project on the Branko Popovic Blog
