African Centre for Cities

Hacking the Future - New ideas for an urban era
2019-06-06 17:30 - 19:30 (Africa/Johannesburg) | The Old Granary, Cnr of Longmarket Street and Harrington Street, Cape Town , South Africa
ACC and Cityscapes Collective presents experts from the worlds of architecture, public health, education, culture and technology to discuss the key ideas driving their work in a series of provocations moderated by award-winning filmmaker, community organiser and urbanist Michael Uwemedimo of CMAP.
Presented as a series of provocations, the ideas they will share on their various practices will show the radical thinking that is necessary to address the many seemingly intractable challenges faced cities globally – but specifically across the global South. It’s clear that business as usual is not enough anymore. This event seeks to expand the palette we are using to determine the future of the global South city beyond the Western template of received wisdom that has been the dominant informant of how we think of the ongoing urban transition
WHEN: 6 June 2019
WHERE: The Old Granary, Cnr Longmarket and Harrington Street, Cape Town
TIME: 17:30- 19:30 followed by drinks and snacks
SPEAKERS

Why systems for health matter, Tolullah Oni
Manufactured architecture can tackle the housing crisis, James Shen
Art & Science alchemy in Tijuana, Raúl Cárdenas Osuna
The case for transforming contemporary African architectural education, Leslie Lokko

BIOGRAPHIES
Michael Uwemedimo is co-founder and director of CMAP [Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform] and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. As a founding member of the filmmaking collaboration, Vision Machine, and a producer of the Academy Award-nominated, BAFTA-winning documentary, The Act of Killing, he has been developing innovative approaches to documentary practice as a means of enabling critical reflection on histories of political violence and challenges to official impunity. As project director of the Human City Project, a community-driven media, architecture, planning and human rights initiative in Nigeria, Michael is exploring design processes through which violently marginalised urban communities might gain a greater measure of control over their representation and the shaping of their cities. Michael has curated major programmes at the National Film Theatre, Tate Modern, Architecture Association and Institute for Contemporary Art, London; and sat on international film festival juries.

Tolullah Oni is a Public Health Physician Scientist and urban epidemiologist, a Clinical Senior Research Associate in Global Public Health at the University of Cambridge MRC Epidemiology Unit, and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town School of Public Health and Family Medicine. Born in Lagos, she completed her medical training (and a BSc in International Health) at University College London, postgraduate medical training in the UK and Australia, a Masters degree in Public Health (Epidemiology) at the University of Cape Town, and a research doctorate in Clinical Epidemiology at Imperial College London. She completed Public Health Medical Specialty training in South Africa and is a Fellow of the College of Public Health Medicine of South Africa. She leads the Research Initiative for Cities Health and Equity (RICHE) conducting transdisciplinary urban health research focused on generating evidence to support development and implementation of healthy public policies in rapidly growing cities, with a focus on Africa. Research activities include Systems for Health projects: investigating how urban systems (e.g. human settlements, food) can be harnessed for health; and Health Systems projects: integrated health system responses to changing patterns of disease and multimorbidity in the context of urbanisation.

Raúl Cárdenas Osuna is founder and principal at Torolab (1995), an artist collective, workshop and laboratory of contextual studies that identifies situations or phenomena of interest for research, basing the studies in the realm of life styles to better grasp the idea of quality of life. His work has been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Havana, Liverpool, Lyon, Montreal and Venice Biennials; and has been awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Harvard’s Cultural Agents Initiative, among others. Cárdenas Osuna has been an advisor for Tijuana’s gov on sustainable city development and social innovation; founded the Digital and Creative axis for the Metropolitan Strategic Plan of Tijuana-Rosarito-Tecate; currently directs the non-profit organization ‘Sociedad de Agentes de Cambio’; directs the program of the Transborder Farmlab in Tijuana; directs the Applied Social Research and Innovation Lab (LiiSA) in Tijuana/Mexico City.

James Shen is principal at People’s Architecture Office. He received his Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BSc in Product Design from California State University, Long Beach. Shen currently holds positions as Research Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and Innovation Fellow at MIT’s China Future City Lab. He has taught as Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. People’s Architecture Office (PAO) is an international practice with offices based in Beijing and Boston. Founded in 2010 by James Shen, He Zhe, and Zang Feng, the firm is a multi-disciplinary studio focused on social impact through design particularly in the areas of housing, education, and urban regeneration. People’s Architecture Office is the first architecture firm certified as a B-Corporation in Asia and serves as a model social enterprise. Domus named PAO as one of the world’s best architecture firms of 2019 and Fast Company listed PAO as one of the world’s ten most innovative architecture companies in 2018. The studio’s award-winning works have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the London Design Museum.

Lesley Lokko is an architect, academic and the author of eleven best-selling novels. She is currently Director of School and Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. In December 2019, she will be taking up a new position as Dean of Architecture, CUNY. She was born in 1964 to Ghanaian-Scots parents and grew up in Ghana. She trained as an architect at the Bartlett School of Architecture from 1989–1995, and gained her PhD in Architecture from the University of London in 2007. She has taught at schools in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and Africa. She is the editor of White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000); editor-in-chief of FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture and is on the editorial board of ARQ (Cambridge University press). She has been an on-going contributor to discourses around identity, race, African urbanism and the speculative nature of African architectural space and practice for nearly thirty years. She is a regular juror at international competitions and symposia, and is a long-term contributor to BBC World. In 2004, she made the successful transition from academic to novelist with the publication of her first novel, Sundowners (Orion 2004), a UK-Guardian top forty best-seller, and has since then followed with ten further best-sellers, which have been translated into fifteen languages.

From platform to plotform: Artistic thinking in spaces of flux
2019-05-28 02:00 - 15:00 | Seminar Room 2, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape
From platform to plotform: Artistic thinking in spaces of flux is a public talk in which ACC research associate Kim Gurney shares work in progress on her project called Platform/ Plotform to help forward future work and interdisciplinary outputs. The project explores working principles identified in participant independent art spaces in five African cities (Nairobi, Accra, Cairo, Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam), and how the predominant forms and strategies of these selected spaces correspond to the urban fabric. The session, a joint effort between ACC and Centre for Humanities Research, will provide an overview of recently concluded fieldwork and some preliminary findings before opening up for discussion.
WHEN: Tuesday, 28 May 2019
VENUE Seminar Room 2, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape
TIME: 14:00 to 15:00
RSVP: Please RSVP Micaela Felix at centreforhumanitiesresearch@uwc.ac.za

How data-ready are African governments to monitor SDG progress?
2019-05-15 12:30 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
UCT Datafirst Manager Lynn Woolfrey presents How data-ready are African governments to monitor SDG progress? Zambia and Zimbabwe reviews on Wednesday, 15 May at 12:30 to 14:00 in Davies Library, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.
ABSTRACT
It is clear from the development literature that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) plans must include the building of efficient development data ecosystems (OECD, 2015, p. 16). Such systems can provide governments with country-level indicators for SDG planning and monitoring. For example, the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Africa Data Consensus suggests that official and other data producers partner to create an international data ecosystem for development planning (UNECA, 2015, p. 2). In 2017 the UN Development Programme (UNDP) adopted such an ecosystems approach to conduct data audits with African governments. The audits assess a government’s “SDG indicator readiness”- whether accurate and current data is available to compile their SDG indicators – and investigate causes and solutions. The UNDP has found ecosystems mapping useful to expose the causes of poor quality national statistics, such as inadequate funding and bureaucratic resistance to change (Menon, 2017, pp. 12-13, 20). This seminar presents the findings of two SDG indicator readiness audits, in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and comment on the outcomes, and the value and shortcomings of these audits for development data capacity-building in African countries.
WHEN: Wednesday, 15 May 2019
TIME: 12:30 to 14:00
VENUE: Davies Library, Level 2, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.

GDI Lecture Series: Ambitious and ambiguous public investments in African cities with Edgar Pieterse
2019-05-08 16:30 - 18:00
The Global Development Institute is pleased to host Edgar Pieterse as part of the GDI Lecture Series, talking about: Ambitious and ambiguous public investments in African cities
Urban governance in most African cities is marked by weak regulatory enablement by national governments, limited autonomous fiscal resources, limited managerial capacity, overlaid by distortionary politics—read a combination of clientelism, patronage, corruption, etcetera. At least, this is the conclusion one arrives at by reading most of the academic literature on the topic. However, in contradistinction, over the last decade or so, there has been a proliferation of ambitious planning and delivery, of especially, mega infrastructural projects. These developments coincide with the proliferation of mainstream incantations of “Africa rising” and other boosterism discourses. It raises important questions about how this level of institutional efficacy could be possible if the literature is accurate. In this talk I aim to report on the findings of a research project on so-called turn-around African cities. We set out to document how noteworthy urban mega projects came onto the agenda, were implemented, often effectively, and what the possible effects might be. The idea is to offer a set of empirical reflections, drawing on six African cities, to get a more refined understanding of contemporary urban planning and governance dynamics in rapidly changing and conflictual contexts.
The Global Development Lecture Series brings experts involved in global development to The University of Manchester. It aims to facilitate dialogue and discussion, providing a space for leading development thinkers to share their latest research and ideas. Lectures are followed by an audience Q&A.
This event is open to members of the public and information on the accessibility of the venue is detailed at this link: https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/roscoe_th-b

POWER TALKS
2019-05-07 18:30 | Ramolao Makhene Theatre at The Market Theatre Laboratory, 138 Lilian Ngoyi Street Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa
The POWER TALKS discussion series, curated and co-hosted by African Centre for Cities and the Goethe-Institut, considers the various practices of European cultural institutions that are active on the African continent. Working in post-apartheid or post-colonial contexts means, for these institutions, a need to situate themselves carefully as well as to be mindful of, and willing to review their working methods.
For the first iteration of POWER TALKS, happening at the Ramolao Makhene Theatre at The Market Theatre Laboratory, we have invited Laila Soliman, Khwezi Gule, Leigh-Ann Naidoo and Molemo Moiloa. The discussion will be facilitated by Jeff Tshabalala.
WHEN: Tuesday, 7 May 2019
TIME: 18:30
VENUE: Ramolao Makhene Theatre at The Market Theatre Laboratory, 138 Lilian Ngoyi Street
Newtown, Johannesburg
POWER TALKS is part of a series of events in 2019 and 2020 to consider dynamics on the African continent and working methodologies of the Goethe-Institut in the region.

BOXES
2019-04-26 14:00 - 15:00 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
BOXES is a social-justice theatre project devised by award-winning theatre makers Neil Coppen and Ameera Conrad, Journalist Daneel Knoetze and performers Quanita Adams and Mark Elderkin. The project draws from a range of research-based, verbatim and documentary theatre methodologies to explore a myriad of perspectives and insights into urban land justice issues occurring across city of Cape Town.
The plays central narrative focuses around a young Cape Town couple: Kaye (Quanita Adams) and Lawrence (Mark Elderkin) who have recently moved into the inner-city and find their preparations for a house-warming dinner, derailed when Lawrence announces that he has accepted a job offer to design a state-of-the art residential development in lower Woodstock. When it is discovered that local residents will be evicted from their neighbourhood to make room for the development, Kaye begins to probe the repercussions of her partner’s latest venture. As Kaye and Lawrence battle it out, we learn of Kaye’s interactions with her Aunt Sumaya in the Bo Kaap, who due to rising rates is having to sell up her family home and has been inspired to return to her activist roots.
As Kaye and Lawrence attempt to arrive at some sort of a resolve before the arrival of their dinner guests, audiences encounter a myriad of characters including property developers, politicians, residents and whistleblowers whose lives are impacted, for better or worse, by the gentrification trends sweeping across the city and suburbs. Over the course of four short scenes, BOXES probes the legacy of apartheid spatial planning and forced removals, examining notions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’, by interrogating the question: Who is really benefitting from all this so-called progress?
BOXES forms part of a wider Open Society Foundation project which connects South African investigative journalists with theatre makers and artists. The Open Society foundation funded the project which sees creatives interpret the work of investigative journalists with the hope that alternative dissemination strategies would enable these narratives to reach wider audiences in the lead up to the 2019 South African elections.
The play is produced by Empatheatre, a company founded by Neil Coppen, Mpume Mthombeni and Dylan McGarry. Empatheatre has been responsible for launching several social-justice theatrical projects over the last decade including Soil & Ash (focusing on rural communities facing pressure from coal-mining companies), Ulwembu (street-level Drug addiction and harm reduction advocacy), The Last Country (female migration stories) and Lalela ulwandle (an international theatre project supporting sustainable transformative governance of the oceans). More recently the Empatheatre team has been invited to work internationally in New York, St Louis, Toronto, Fiji, Ghana and Namibia.
DATE: 26 April 2019
TIME: 14:00 to 15:00
VENUE: Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Space is limited.
Please RSVP to africancentreforcities.rsvp@gmail.com

SDG Seminar: Unpacking SDG implementation in eThekwini
2019-04-17 14:00 - 15:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Puvendra Akkiah, IDP Manager of eThekwini Municipality and Technical Chair of the United Cities and Local Governments Committee on Urban Strategic Planning, will present a talk entitled Unpacking SDG implementation in eThekwini on Wednesday, 17 April, at 14:00 to 15:30 in Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.
Akkiah will be talking about the City of eThekwini’s bottom-up approach to aligning its Integrated Development Plan to the SDGs as part of its strategic approach to sustainability and the advocacy and training activities that the City has undertaken to raise awareness and support for SDG localization.
WHEN: 17 April 2019
TIME: 14:00 to 15:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.

Whose Heritage Matters? Mapping, Making and Mobilising Heritage Values for Sustainable Livelihoods in Cape Town and Kisumu
2019-04-10 12:00 - 13:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town and Kisumu are two secondary African cities with high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality. There is much interest in developing sustainable approaches to harnessing tangible and intangible heritage to address these challenges. However, cultural heritage is a value-laden concept, particularly in the context of colonial histories and urban futures. Whose heritage matters? How can we negotiate competing and plural values? How can cultural heritage be mobilised to support sustainable livelihoods? Funded by the British Academy, this co-produced action research project will bring different stakeholders and communities together to map heritage values and develop creative interventions to harness tangible and intangible heritage for sustainable development’.
This Brown Bag Seminar will introduce the project, and open up a conversation about the role and value of heritage in sustainable and just urban development.
When: 10 April 2019
Time: 12:00 – 13:o0
Venue: Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Launch of 'The Walk'
2019-03-18 11:30 - 13:00 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
African Centre for Cities invites you to the launch of a new publication entitled The Walk. This publication, which is based on a research study entitled The Prospects for Socio-Spatial Transformation in the Voortrekker Road Corridor by Mercy Brown-Luthango, was supported by the French Development Agency (AFD) and focuses on Maitland, Kensington and Factreton. The main concern of this study was to understand the vision of city officials and politicians, as outlined in major policy documents, and how this compares to the daily lived experiences of those who reside and conduct business in the three study areas.
Please join us for a series of panel presentations followed by a facilitated discussion on the prospects and challenges for socio-spatial transformation in the Voortrekker Road Corridor Integration Zone (VRCIZ).
DATE: 18 March 2019
TIME: 11:30 to 13:00 (followed by lunch)
VENUE: Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town
PLEASE RSVP to africancentreforcities.rsvp@gmail.com by 16 March 2019 for catering purposes.

Bad Health in a Good Retreat: Life and Death in the 'Worst' Neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil
2019-02-25 12:30 - 14:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Prof Jeffrey Lesser will be presenting a seminar entitled Bad Health in a Good Retreat: Life and Death in the ‘Worst’ Neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, on Monday, 25 February 2019, 12:30 to 14:00, in the Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.
ABSTRACT
Bom Retiro was (and is) a small neighborhood in the huge megalopolis of São Paulo, Brazil. The mainly working class neighborhood has been populated since the end of the 19th century by immigrants, migrants from the impoverished Brazilian northeast, and Afro-Brazilian descendants of slaves. While the cultural backgrounds of the immigrants have shifted (from Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese Catholics in the early 20th century to East European Jews in the mid-20th century to Chinese, Korean, Paraguayan, and Bolivian immigrants today), the neighborhood has been viewed internally and externally as one where health (in the broadest sense of the word) is precarious. “Bad Health in a Good Retreat” analyzes the relationship between “Public Health” (as a state driven set of policies and linked enforcement) and “The Public’s Health” (how real people understand their own experiences). By focusing on one square block of Bom Retiro from about 1900 to the present I use archival and ethnographic methods to analyze the daily practices of residents and health officials, and the stories they tell about life, death, and the spaces in between.
BIOGRAPHY
Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Brazilian Studies and Director of Emory University’s Halle Institute for Global Research. His research focus is on the construction of national identity in Brazil, focusing on how immigrant and ethnic groups understand their own and national space. Lesser is the author of numerous prize winning books including, Immigration, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil (Cambridge University Press) A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy (Duke University Press); Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Duke University Press); and Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (University of California Press).

SDGs Seminar Series: Localizing the SDGs in South Africa
2019-02-13 12:30 - 14:00 | Environmental and Geographical Science Building, South Lane, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape , 8001, South Africa
Over the course of the next semester African Centre for Cities will be curating and hosting a series of seminars and discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals. The series kicks-off with Dr Sylvia Croese with a seminar on Localizing the SDGs in South Africa on Wednesday, 13 February 2019, at 12:30 to 14:00 in the Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
The inclusion of a standalone urban goal as part of the 17 SDGs adopted in 2015 represents the culmination of the growing recognition and acknowledgement of the importance of cities as both drivers and actors in achieving sustainable development. However, nearly four years down the line very little is known about the ways in which local governments are going about the implementation and monitoring of the SDGs. This presentation draws on on-going research in and with the City of Cape Town to shed some light on some of the factors and conditions that may limit or enable SDG localization. It kicks off a series of seminars that will be held on a monthly basis throughout 2019 on the challenges and opportunities for SDG implementation in (South) Africa.
WHEN: Wednesday, 13 February 2019
TIME: 12:30 to 14:00
VENUE: Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT

BROWNBAG SEMINAR: How Cities Respond to Climate Change: Ambition and Reality of European and African Cities
2019-01-28 12:30 - 13:30 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC and ACDI for a lunchtime brownbag seminar by Diana Reckien, Associate Professor, University of Twente, Netherlands entitled How Cities Respond to Climate Change: Ambition and Reality of European and African Cities.
WHERE: Studio 5, Level 5, Environmental & Geographical Sciences Building (EGS)
UCT Upper Campus, Rondebosch
WHEN: 12.30 – 1.30pm, Monday 28 January 2019
Diana Reckien will present some of her latest research on local climate planning in European cities, that builds on a network of 30 collaborators across the EU-28.
Building up a database of the climate change response of 885 cities in the EU-28 (representative of the urban profile in their country), Diana and colleagues were able to yield insights into which cities in Europe prepare climate (adaptation or mitigation) plans and what these plans entail. This provides information about, e.g., the mitigation targets/ambitions and whether these would be sufficient to reach 1.5/2C, prominent mitigation and adaptation sectors, and modes of implementation (mainstreaming or not).
Diana will then move to some of her work in African cities, presenting recent research on mainstreaming in Kigali City (Rwanda) and on environmental urban migration in northern Kenya.
She will close with ideas and plans for future research, e.g. potentially open up topics for collaboration, such as perception based climate change impact analyses in African cities using FCM, cascading impacts, socially sensible adaptation options, and/or the effectiveness of adaptation plans.
BIOGRAPHY
Diana Reckien is Associate Professor “Climate Change and Urban Inequality” at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. She specializes at the interface of climate change and urban research, with the aim to contribute to justice efforts.
One of her current research question is how climate change mitigation and adaptation policies affect and interact with social vulnerability, equity and justice, and how to set up adaptation and mitigation policies in order to avoid respective negative side-effects. Other research interests include method development for impact and adaptation assessments, and modelling approaches, social vulnerability, and climate change migration.
She mainly investigates urban areas in Europe, Asia (mainly India), and Africa. To do so, she employs large comparative studies using social science methods, such as questionnaires, case study analyses and multi-variate statistics, as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM).
Diana is Coordinating Lead Author for “Chapter 17: Decision-making options for managing risk” of the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. She led parts of the Second Assessment Report for Climate Change in Cities (ARC3.2; Eds: Rosenzweig, Solecki et al.; Cambridge University Press) – those that relate to equity and environmental justice. She serves on the Editorial Board of “Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews”(IF 8.050).
Her publication record comprises roughly 70 publications, including 25 peer-reviewed journal papers, a number of book chapters, and two special issues.

Exhibition: 'this image may contain' by heeten bhagat
2018-11-21 18:00 - 23:55 | The Quad, The Arena Theatre, Cape Tpwn
Join ACC’s PhD candidate heeten bhagat for ‘this image may contain’ – a visual articulation of research in speculative indigeneities on Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 18:00 at The Quad, The Arena Theatre.
The aim of this doctoral research was to attempt an interdisciplinary approach to search for registers (and absences) of indigeneity through a close reading of the 2017 Independence day celebration, held at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, Zimbabwe. The focus of this study was motivated by two distinct elements from the event: The first is a banner that hangs over the official entrance to the performance arena, that declares – ‘ZIMBABWE WILL NEVER A BE COLONY AGAIN’. The second element is a fragment from the president’s address to the nation at this ceremony, which proclaims, “…..we can now call ourselves full the masters of our destiny”.
This works on show constitute the concluding articulation of this research journey into notions of speculative and speculating indigeneities.

LAUNCH: 'Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks: Running our Cities to Fill the Food Cap'
2018-11-21 17:30 - 19:00 | The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC for the Cape Town launch of Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks: Running our Cities to Fill the Food Gap, by Leonie Joubert with Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson published by the African Centre for Cities on Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 17:30 for 18:00 at The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town. Author Leonie Joubert will be in conversation with Nancy Richards.
The book is based on research conducted by the Consuming Urban Poverty team comprised of urban geographers, sociologists, economists and planners from the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town, Copperbelt University in Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the Kisumu Local Interaction Platform (KLIP), in Kisumu, Kenya.
Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks, illustrated with evocative photography by Samantha Reinders and Masixole Feni, distills the research into a digestible read and is published alongside the academic book Urban Food Systems Governance and Poverty in African Cities (Routledge, 2018) edited by Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson.
Both book are available as Open Access downloads from www.tomatoesandtaxiranks.org.za
Hard copies of the book are available for purchase from The Book Lounge for R150. All proceeds are donated to the Open Box School Library project.

Public Finance – the Life Blood of our Cities?
2018-11-19 15:00 - 17:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Bushbuckridge mayor embarks on debt collection exercise
“The municipality has disclosed that it is owed R1 billion in unpaid municipal services such as water supply, refuse removal and property rates.” – Mpumalanga News, 1 October 2018

Heads Roll Amid VBS Municipal Probe
“Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says several municipal officials have been suspended and in some instances, charged with fraud in relation to investments made in VBS Mutual Bank.” – AllAfrica.com 23 October 2018

Join African Centre for Cities on Monday, 19 November 2018, from 15:00 to 17:00 for a lecture by Dr Matthew Glasser on public finance.
Across the globe, there is increasing emphasis on the role of cities and local government in delivering services, meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, addressing climate change, and equalizing opportunity. These assigned roles do not often translate into reality. Many South African municipalities are failing to provide effective services to their residents. Part of the reason for this are the regular financial crises which local governments face. Importantly, South Africa is one of very few countries in the world that has specific legislation intended to resolve fiscal problems at the municipal scale. This legislation is little known and little used.
In 2000-2003, Dr Matthew Glasser helped develop the legislation regarding financial problems in municipalities, as reflected in Section 139 (as amended) of the Constitution, and Chapter 13 of the Municipal Finance Management Act. For the last two years, he has been working with National Treasury to take stock of the implementation of those provisions over the intervening 15 years.
At this seminar, we will discuss the legal and regulatory framework that was developed to deal with financial emergencies in South African cities; review the experience to date with implementation of that framework; and reflect on the ways in which South Africa’s social and political context shapes local implementation. Glasser will discuss the genesis of the legislation, the divergence between legal framework and actual implementation, and the important Emalahleni litigation related to fiscal intervention in municipalities, which has set an important precedent in South Africa. There will be ample time to discuss the fiscal challenges of South African local and city government, following the lecture.
WHEN: Monday, 19 November 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Mistra Urban Futures Realising Just Cities - Comparative Co-production
2018-11-06 - 2018-11-07 | SunSquare Hotel, 23 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town , Western Cape , South Africa
The rapidly growing number of people moving into cities all over the world presents a challenge of unprecedented size. It is crucial to find ways to make urbanisation a source for wealth, health and sustainability – which is shared. Mistra Urban Futures arranges Annual Conferences about Realising Just Cities, which are hosted at our research platforms.
The 2018 conference will take place in Cape Town, South Africa and focus on comparative co-production and how we jointly can address global urban challenges. The conference intends to share and reflect on a selection of the comparative projects that have been co-produced in Mistra Urban Futures’ second phase: Cultural Heritage and Just Cities; Knowledge Transfer through embedded research; Migration and Urban Development; Participatory Cities; Solid Waste Management; Sustainable Development Goals; Transportation and Urban Development; Urban Food Value Chain and Urban Public Finance.
Dates
Internal workshops
The internal workshops, only available for invited participants involved in Mistra Urban Futures’ comparative projects, will be held on 5 November 2018. Find the internal programme here
Conference
The conference takes place on 6 and 7 November 2018. Find the programme here
Follow the ACC social media channels for live reporting from the conference:
Facebook
Twitter

Urban Humanities: Contextualising strategies to enable LGBT rights in Africa: legitimacies, spatial inequalities and socio-spatial relationships
2018-11-01 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join us for the an Urban Humanities academic seminar entitled Contextualising strategies to enable LGBT rights in Africa: legitimacies, spatial inequalities and socio-spatial relationships, by Dr Andrew Tucker on Thursday, 1 November 2018 at 15:00.
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the potential benefits of relationally considering the efficacy of radically different strategies to support LGBT rights in Africa. While a great deal has been written about the deployment of human rights-based framings to support LGBT needs on the continent, less attention has been paid to other emergent strategies based around HIV/AIDS programming and economic development initiatives. This paper sets out a schema to consider the relational nature of these different strategies and highlights how such a schema can also enable researchers to better understand how civil society groups strategically and pragmatically harness different approaches in particular places and at particular times.
WHEN: Thursday, 1 November 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities: False Bay: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities
2018-10-25 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
ACC is very excited to host Dr Shari Daya in conversation with Dr Hedley Twidle, reflecting on the Environmental Humanities through encounters with False Bay.
Dr Twidle is a senior lecturer in the English Department at UCT.
“I joined the department in 2010 as a lecturer in southern African and postcolonial literatures. Much of my current work addresses contemporary life-writing and non-fiction narrative. What, after all, does the word ‘literary’ signify in a phrase like ‘literary non-fiction’? And how can one explore the array of non-fictional modes that are simultaneously drawn on, refashioned and blurred into each other in South African writing: experimental auto/biography, investigative journalism, the Struggle memoir, the diary, microhistorical and archival reconstruction.
My research also explores the difficult relation between environmental thought and social history in southern Africa. Since 2013 I have been involved in the conceptualisation and planning of a new interdisciplinary M Phil in the Environmental Humanities, launched in February 2015. I am also a member of the Archive and Public Culture research initiative, a dynamic intellectual space where new research can be presented to experts in the field”.

Urban Humanities: Storytelling as method: migration, gender and inclusion in Durban
2018-10-18 08:00 - 17:00 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
ABSTRACT
Storytelling as a form of urban scholarship has the potential for empathetic ways of producing knowledge, understanding, seeing and being in the city. This seminar explores how storytelling in a multitude of forms can be a productive method for data collection, public dissemination and advocacy for social justice. It discusses this based on a year and half long partnership project between scholars and civil society organisations on Migration, Gender and Inclusion in the city of Durban. In this project women’s stories of arriving in the city and making it something like home were positioned at the centre of project activities. Thirty oral histories of migrant women, both South African women living in a Durban hostel and women arriving from the DRC, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Uganda formed the primary data set. These narratives were then developed into a verbatim theatre performance titled The Last Country that was performed in many different settings around the city. The seminar outlines how the play was both a form of storytelling in itself, making accessible the oral history data to a broader public audience, and a form of data collection through discussion sessions with audience members and city officials. This seminar looks at the learnings and challenges we experienced through being a part of a project built around the idea of sharing stories in the city.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr Kira Erwin is a sociologist and senior researcher at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. Kira’s research and publications focus largely around race, racialisation, racism and anti-racism work in South Africa. She is interested in how place identities related to space and the built environment impact on ideas of social difference. Kira makes use of creative participatory methods in her research and engagement projects, and collaborates with colleagues in the creative arts to design forms of storytelling that extend research findings beyond the walls of academia.
WHEN: 18 October 2018
TIME: 15:00 – 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities: Conversations on cultural mapping and planning
2018-10-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
“Cultural planning sits at the intersection of people, places and policies— It provides a framework for addressing the needs and objectives of a city’s cultural sector and cultural life including arts, culture and heritage groups and practitioners that shape a city’s cultural ecosystem.”

Dr Rike Sitas will facilitate a discussion between three panelists that will look at how cultural mapping and planning responds to different research contexts depending on the questions asked and the way in which every day cultural practises unfold in different communities, namely, Hanover Park and Mannenberg, Cosmo City and Mitchells Plain. The overall aims of this research is to unearth some of the cultural practises and narratives in deprived communities in South African cities and how people navigate and express themselves despite the lack of material resources and services. These types of research projects also help to inform policy around arts and cultural services for local government.

BIOS
Shamila Rahim is a cultural worker and activist who has worked extensively in the Arts, Cultural and Heritage sector in Cape Town for the last 25 years. Currently she works at City of Cape Town as a Professional Officer in the Arts and Culture Branch. Her interests are in understanding and using arts, culture and heritage as agents to facilitate mind set change which empower the individual to voice and become active in creating positive narratives of themselves and society as a whole.

Vaughn Sadie is a conceptual artist, educator and researcher, living and working in Cape Town (South Africa). He is currently registered in the PhD Programme at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology and work at African Centre for Cities as a researcher. He is interested in interdisciplinary and participatory practices, and the place of art in various social contexts.

Alicia Fortuin is a Masters Graduate from the School of Architecture and Planning where she completed her Masters degree in City and Regional Planning. Her Dissertation looked at the Spaces of and for Participation in the Restitution of land in District Six. It is through this research process where her interests in urban governance, rights, community participation and healing and memory evolved. She has most recently received the Pan African College Phd Scholarship at the African Centre for Cities, where she will be embarking on a PHD journey which will look at the impacts and of land use dynamics and urban sprawl on young professionals in Cape Town.

Urban Humanities: Speculative Indigeneity – A (K)new Now by heeten bhagat
2018-09-27 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3,, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC for a brown bag lecture by PhD student heeten bhagat on entitled Speculative Indigeneity — A (K)new Now.
Heeten holds a BA in Design and Merchandising from The American College in London and a Masters in Audio Visual Production from London Metropolitan University.
His initial training as a pattern cutter has allowed him the chance to grow, and, to experience and work: designing period costumes; building sets for adventure programmes; making experimental films; curating a national gallery; teaching at a French university; providing strategic support to newer organisations; making curious podcasts; and inviting a provocative hybridity to his family’s cookbook.
Currently journeying through a PhD, he simultaneously offer creative, strategic, and manual support to a number of organisations and communities regionally.
His research delves into notions of indigenousness and indigeneity in contemporary Zimbabwe. Of particular focus is the objective to explore/engineer/imagine methodologies, through speculative research, that trouble indigenous essentialisms.

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: The Invention of the ‘Sink Estate’: Consequential Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis
2018-09-20 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
The Invention of the ‘Sink Estate’: Consequential Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis presented by Tom Slater explores the history and traces the realisation of a category that was invented by journalists, amplified by free market think tanks and converted into policy doxa (common sense) by politicians in the United Kingdom: the ‘sink estate’. This derogatory designator, signifying social housing estates that supposedly create poverty, family breakdown, worklessness, welfare dependency, antisocial behaviour and personal irresponsibility, has become the symbolic frame justifying current policies towards social housing that have resulted in considerable social suffering and intensified dislocation. The article deploys a conceptual articulation of agnotology (the intentional production of ignorance) with Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power to understand the institutional arrangements and cognitive systems structuring deeply unequal social relations. Specifically, the highly influential publications on housing by a free market think tank, Policy Exchange, are dissected in order to demonstrate how the activation of territorial stigma has become an instrument of urban politics. The ‘sink estate’, it is argued, is the semantic battering ram in the ideological assault on social housing, deflecting attention away from social housing not only as urgent necessity during a serious crisis of affordability, but as incubator of community, solidarity, shelter and home.
WHEN: Thursday 20 September 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Vital Geopolitics by Gerry Kearns
2018-09-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Vital Geopolitics is the study of international relations from the perspective of life itself. Colonialism and neoliberalism are not only economic forces, they shape social reproduction and the geography of labour power. Viewed in this way, demography and gender, famine and migration, intellectual property and extortion, suicide and capital punishment share a profound set of mutual determinants. Tracing marginality as a set of biological relations reveals some of the links between, for example, primitive accumulation and the Anthropocene.
Gerry Kearns is Professor of Human Geography at Maynooth University, Ireland, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His is the author of Geopolitics and Empire (Oxford University Press 2009) and co-editor of Spatial Justice and the Irish Crisis (Royal Irish Academy 2014).
WHEN: Tuesday, 18 September 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

IMAGE CREDIT: Michael Farrell, Wounded Wonder, Mixed media on paper, 96.5 x 105 cm.

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: pumflet - art, architecture and stuff by Ilze Wolff
2018-09-06 12:30 - 13:30 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Ilze Wolff co-directs Wolff Architects with Heinrich Wolff and co-founded Open House Architecture (OHA), a research practice that documents and reflects on Southern Africa architecture in Cape Town. In 2016/7 she was the recipient of the L’erma C International Prize for Scholarly Works in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture, Rome, for her dissertation Unstitching Rex Trueform, the story of an African factory, published in 2018. The work of Wolff Architects has exhibited at the Venice Biennale; MOMA, New York; Louisiana MOMA, Denmark; Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen; and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. OHA/Wolff regularly host exhibitions, interventions, publications and talks in collaboration with artists and scholars so as to develop an enduring public culture around the city, space and personhood. In 2018 she was shortlisted for the Architectural Review’s Moira Gemmill Emerging Architect of the year award and is currently a fellow at the University of the Western Cape’s Centre for Humanities Research.
‘pumflet’ was founded in 2016 by the pumfleteers collective (Wolff and Kemang Wa Lehulere) in order to publish interventions into the social imagination. The talk will show recent pumflet projects and reflect on some of the themes that ground the work and that are beginning to emerge such as, nostalgia vs histories of the present; the importance of the social imagination, aesthetics of repair and conversations as scholarly discourse.

WHEN: Thursday, 6 September 2018

TIME: 12:30 to 13:30
VENUE: Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

ACC at the Open Book Festival 2018
2018-09-05 12:00 - 2018-09-07 11:00
African Centre for Cities (ACC) teams up with The Book Lounge to present five urban-focussed events at the forthcoming 2018 Open Book Festival, which takes place from 5 to 9 September, Cape Town.
The five events draws on the ACC community to engage and interrogate a series of topics ranging from inclusive urban development and issues of mobility to urban activism and blackness in the city.

5 September 2018
12.00 – 13.00
Fugard Studio, Corner Caledon & Lower Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Kigali to Cape Town: Tomá Berlanda and Rick de Satge speak to Philippa Tumubweinee about inclusive urban development.
6 September 2018
10.00 – 11.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Mobility and the City: Phumeza Mlungwana for UniteBehind and Cllr Brett Herron, City of Cape Town join David Schmidt in conversation with Pippa Green about getting from A – B.
12.00 – 13.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Activist Cities: Richard Dyantyi, Axolile Notywala and Ichumile Gqada speak to Ella Scheepers about militant urbanism.
14.00 – 15.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Integration Syndicate Provocations: Tracy Jooste, Nishendra Moodley and Kate Philip speak to Andrew Gasnolar about the findings of the Integration Syndicate over the past year.
7 September
10.00 – 11.00
Homecoming Centre Workshop, 15A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Urbanity, Blackness & Mobilities: Mpho Matsipa and Sammy Baloji speak to Mokena Makeka.

For the full festival programme click here.
To purchase tickets for these events go here.

SCREENING: Not in my Neighbourhood
2018-08-31 14:00 - 16:00 | LS3B, Leslie Social Sciences Building, Upper Campus UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Not in My Neighbourhood (Official Trailer) from Azania Rizing Productions on Vimeo.
As cities around the world catapult themselves into ‘World Class’, Global City status, we have to ask ourselves, “at what cost”? Not in my Neighbourhood (NIMN), a film by Kurt Orderson of Azania Rizing Productions, tells the intergenerational stories of the ways in which ordinary citizens respond to the policies, processes and institutions driving contemporary forms of spatial violence. With the aim of building solidarity amongst active urban citizens, the film provides insights into the tools and approaches used by urban activist to shape and navigate their cities, from the bottom up.
The film explores the effects of various forms of spatial violence on the spirit and social-psyche of citizens. It follows their daily struggles, trials and triumphant moments. Portraying our characters as active citizens, fighting for their right to the city, the film acts as a portrait of stories telling the history of spatial violence within the background of colonization, architectural Apartheids and gentrification. The production of NIMN film took place over a 4-year period of exploring, unpacking and unveiling the violence of modernist political culture and its translation into spatial planning. Making the film over four years allowed for a transectional analysis of the developments in a city over time.
WHEN: Friday, 31 August
TIME: 14:00 to 16:00
VENUE: LS3B, Leslie Social Sciences Building, Upper Campus UCT
ENTRANCE: Free of charge and open to all

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Dr Sabina Favaro: 'in search of thick mapping: listening to Cape Town's cities'
2018-08-30 03:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3
Dr Sabina Favaro will be sharing a paper entitled ‘in search of thick mapping: listening to Cape Town’s cities’

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Valmont Layne on 'Auditing' vernacular Cape Town as a sonic city
2018-08-23 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3
We are excited to host Valmont Layne from the University of the Western Cape’s Humanities Research Centre who will be reflecting on ‘Auditing’ vernacular Cape Town as a sonic city’
ABSTRACT: Cape Town offers a generative example of the postcolonial port city as an affective space – especially reading its vernacular musicking lifeworld as sonic expressions of oceanic and terrestrial worlds. In this talk, Valmont Layne share some of the opportunities and challenges of doing this work, and will reflect on the possible implications for new epistemic engagements with the postcolonial city drawing on literatures on affect and on sound studies.
WHEN: Thursday, 23 August 2018
TIME: 13:00-14:00
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Buildings, Upper Campus, UCT

The Integrated City: Local Cultural Policy and Sustainable Integrated Urban Development
2018-08-17 08:30 - 15:00 | John Martin Room, New Engineering Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
This seminar at UCT’s African Centre for Cities looks to continue a set of dialogues around cultural governance and sustainable urban development in South Africa. It brings two processes together:

The Local Cultural Policy Agenda: South African cities are potential spaces for dynamic change as a result of being the nexus for flows of people and ideas. Culture is increasingly seen as significant in urban transformation. A long-term approach to exploring innovative urban governance frameworks that forward the use of culture has been proposed as a research agenda. These speak to new national frameworks around integrated urban development as well as revisions to the Arts and Culture White paper.
Integrating the Dual City: The African Centre for Cities recent Integration and Ideas Festival continue a interest in the role of culture for sustainable development, putting forward a number of innovative provocations to address the dual city. These included a strong focus on issues related to culture (memory, storytelling and identity), placemaking (densified, dynamic neighborhoods) and relationality (including through mobility, solidarity networks, “hubs”, and the digital space).

The seminar objectives

Further a dialogue between researchers working in civil society and government concerned with the culture and its role in urban transformation.
To test the viability of a specific provocation – the UCLG Agenda 21 for Culture – Culture Actions: a framework for governance that furthers the use of culture for sustainable development in cities – against provocations at the recent festival, and including engaging with practitioners.

To identify possible future paths of inquiry and collaboration amongst researchers based in Cape Town with those elsewhere in South Africa.

WHEN: 17 August 2018
TIME: 8.30 for 9:00-15:00
VENUE: John Martin Room, New Engineering Building, UCT
RSVP: Places are limited. Please send an RSVP email with any dietary requirements to africancentreforcities.rsvp@gmail.com
PROGROGRAMME
8:30-9:00 Registration and coffee
9:00-9:30 Welcome, Introduction and Viewing of Exhibition
Introduction. Providing the input on Local Cultural Policy Agenda, responding to Integration ideas Festival and introducing the UCLG Agenda 21 for Culture Actions.
Speaker: Zayd Minty
9:30-10:30 Cultural Narratives – Heritage, Creativity, Urban Change
Working with memory and notions of heritage, building on local creativity, provide a powerful way to build meaning for citizens and so build sense of purpose. Why is this important for cities and what can we do about it?
Presenters: Naomi Roux (UCT) and Valmont Layne (UWC)
Respondent: Deirdre Prins-Solani (Education, Culture and Heritage Specialist)
10:30-11:00 Tea
11:00-12:00 Place Making and the potential of Socially Engaged Public Practise
There is a growing need for thinking about denser, more livable spaces that are also more resonant and meaningful through socially engaged public art/practices. How can local government make this happen?
Presenters: Rike Sitas (UCT) and Anna Selmeczi (UCT)
Respondent: Brenda Skelenge (Lukhanyo Hub)
12:00-13:00 Cultural Mapping and Planning
The CoCT’s Cultural Mapping and Planning initiative provides an opportunity for communities to revalue their tangible and intangible assets and begin dialogues for community change. How is this relevant for cities?
Presenters: Vaughn Sadie (UCT/DUT) and Laura Nkula-Wenz (UCT)
Respondent: TBC
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Closing discussion
Way forward for research, policy and practice agendas and support network. Led by Avril Joffe (Wits)

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Inclusive Cultural Governance: Integrating artistic and cultural practices into national urban frameworks by Avril Joffe
2018-08-16 03:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join African Centre for Cities for the second seminar the second seminar in our Urban Humanities series, Zayd Minty will be responding to Avril Joffe talking about Inclusive Cultural Governance: Integrating artistic and cultural practices into national urban frameworks
WHEN: 16 August 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
SPEAKER
Avril Joffe is an economic sociologist with experience in the field of cultural policy, culture and development and the cultural economy. She is the head of the Cultural Policy and Management Department at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Avril is an active member of UNESCO’s Panel of Experts for Cultural Policy and Governance undertaking missions to support African governments in developing cultural policies, cultural industry strategies, reporting on their implementation of the UNESCO Convention, writing and editing training manuals and recently contributed to the Global Monitoring Report 2018 on the ‘Integration of Culture in Sustainable Development’. Avril is a member of the South African Ministerial Review Panel to draft a revised cultural policy for South Africa. She is on the board of the National Arts Council and chairs the Audit and Risk Committee for the NAC.
RESPONDENT
Zayd Minty is a professional cultural development manager and curator. He has previously, since 1993, worked in and with the cultural sector, civil society, academia and government, in various leadership roles. In addition to cultural policy and strategy work, he has curated various arts projects and festivals. He is currently registered at the African Centre for Cities doing a doctorate looking at Cultural Clusters and Urban Development in the Johannesburg Inner City.
