ImaginingOtherwise (2020)
ImaginingOtherwise is a cross disciplinary collaboration grounded in performance, activism and youth-led social change. The co-creator collective of young people located in Cape Town’s Cape Flats seeks to establish a sense of place beyond systemic identification of place with gangs, drugs and violence. ImaginingOtherwise aims to challenge youth disempowerment related to lack of resources as consequence of systematic erasure and forgetting.
The project partners, Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education and Bottomup deliver arts-based activism and education, with an explicit focus on young people’s participation in the community and a mentorship programme. The partners build capacity through intensive workshops with local artists: performance, storyboards and graphic novel. The cross-arts collaborative storying of experiences and dissemination enables a wide audience to engage with what young people identify in their communities for developing resilience. Drawing on the team’s collective experience in working with marginalised young people and the arts as method for critical engagement in public life, ImaginingOtherwise approach the context of violence and exclusion through participatory arts.
The following film by Peacemore on Zimbabwe was created following digital workshops with arts mentors LoDef Film Factory.
Peacemore, creator of the film.
ImaginingOtherwise workshop.
“For me to make that film, my grandmother stays in Zimbabwe and my grandfather is there so its quite a struggle to live, right now it is hard to find food, my aunt is in the army and she is not being paid any more.
So when we were asked to make a film I always wanted to do something that can bring a message…. I thought about what Robert Mugabe said, giving promises to people like ‘we are going to change the city for everybody’ but there is still no difference.
About 3 or 4 months ago my dad went to Zimbabwe and sent us this video of my grandparents crying, everyone in Zimbabwe is struggling the police are harassing people, nobody is free.
I sat down and thought if I take this found footage and edit into the video and put myself into the video so that people can see this is the present, this is the past and this is how it is going to look in the future and I wanted that message to go out” (Peacemore, creator).