Cape Town has long projected a single dimension to the international community, flaunting its natural beauty and presenting a caricature of its rich culture. While mountain and sea are undeniably Cape Town’s principle hooks, the picture is incomplete without exploring their intrinsic link to the creative pulse at the city’s heart.
Motif is a prospective web-doc series seeking funding and/or co-production to showcase twelve creative Capetonians and allow viewers to experience the city through their craft. Creativity in Cape Town is not driven by a collective manifesto or common goals but there is a clearly distinguishable “motif” in the city’s creative emissions. All it takes is twelve creatives for the pattern to emerge. A broad range of creative disciplines will be presented with a view to traversing socio-economic, gender, ethnic and national lines. The widest possible lens is applied to reflect the city’s contemporary multiplicity.
Against the backdrop of Cape Town being selected as World Design Capital 2014, our pilot “webisode” features one of our city’s many extraordinary creative talents. Conrad Hicks, a blacksmith who works in the iconic Bijou building in the suburb of Observatory, shares his thoughts on the overlapping worlds of toolmaking and sculpture. A Profoundly South African co-production, this video was created by Matthew Carkeek, Calum MacNaughton and Ian Naidu for Inner City Media.
