Boxing clever imperative amid the innovation revolution
IN THIS second instalment of a retrospective conversation with architect Mokena Makeka, we look at how one thing leads to another.
Mokena, you started the Museum of Design, Innovation, Leadership and Art in 2011 in support of an “entrepreneurial and innovation revolution”. What is the role of MoDILA and other projects like it as agents of change?
It’s interesting you mention MoDILA because it was always a project that had two legs. One was the notion of a physical presence in the city, to visualise design, and the other leg was the programmes that we thought would be quite interesting for youth development.
We’ve managed to get some very good support from the Department of Arts and Culture at a national level, and that’s been exciting for us. It’s been a period during which we’ve been unable to generate any capital from local government, or provincial government for that matter. So there’s a bit of irony there, that a project of this nature is supported more by national capital even though its impact is locally imagined.
But when I had conceived of MoDILA there was nothing like it around, and now there is the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa going up at the Waterfront, literally 500m from where I had imagined the MoDILA building would be, and there has been an explosion of art and design galleries from the central city to Woodstock. No individual can claim to be the cause of all this, but the point is, sometimes our ideas do inspire others and
People talk a lot about things like Moonlight Mass and First Thursdays (which is focused on the CBD galleries you mentioned) and other citizen-led activities like Open Streets. Even if this is part of an international trend, there seems to be a local groundswell of support and a spinning off of new activities in the public realm.
I think there is a lot to be said for where we are now versus where we were five years ago. The things you mention, and developments around the city, are quite frankly amazing, and every time I think I know the city I’m hearing something about a new restaurant or event or something happening with other designers.
So it is definitely, as I would expect, the design fraternity simply getting on with business. Whether or not government is able to interact with those energies as an enabler is something that is not clear to me at this point.
I’m consistently amazed by the amount of innovation that’s happening on the ground in terms of what people are doing and how they are occupying the city, so I totally agree with you. Maybe the turning point was the World Cup. I would certainly say it preceded the World Design Capital.
I think WDC rode the wave of a lot of interesting things that were already beginning to happen in the city. In terms of the state’s ability to support that, I’m not sure… And if I say the state I mean individuals beyond the key champions who are positioned to institute change.
I’m not so sure that government as a whole (local, provincial or national) understands the creative industries and how to unlock them. Currently, I am sitting on the Cultural and Creative Industries Federation of South Africa, which was set up by the previous minister of arts and culture and has been adopted by Minister Mthethwa now, and the idea is to create a nationwide federation for the creative industries.
This is the first time that that type of conversation has even featured in cabinet, and now they are recognising that everything from carpentry to spray painting to architecture to fashion is design. And that there is a huge amount of capital that can be unlocked for us as a country, particularly when we are competing against places where labour is cheap, like China or India.
So the imperative for us to box clever using creativity is quite clear. The question is who captures that value, and how it can be shared.
More to come.