CareCreative and Dfeat Once (HC360 crew) share their experience
The Community Kitchens in Vrygrond are nodes of (inter)action, hope and care. Throughout the Covid-19 response, Amava Oluntu engaged in supporting youths in developing response strategies and in sourcing as well as distributing food to community kitchens. CareCreative and Dfeat Once got the chance to collaborate with the Harmony’s Angel and Xakabantu Kitchens. The kitchen team members were invited to imagine a positive and healthy environment with new possibilities beyond COVID-19 and participated in the design process of colorful mural paintings.
We began by meeting as a team to talk about our intentions and actions of the project. We felt very inspired by working together in this way. Our first engagement was with the Harmony’s Angels kitchen. Together with their kitchen team, we dreamed a future vision and spoke of the past history of the kitchen. We created a collage of ideas and spoke through what was important to inspire through the painting.
Chrislyn Linnet’s mom had been the original Harmony’s Angel. She worked tirelessly providing food for her community. If someone was in need, they knew where to go. It was decided to paint her portrait as part of the mural in honor of the work she did and as the guardian angel of the Kitchen. You will see a photograph of her granddaughter standing next to the portrait, 3 generations of cooking for their community.
Our next engagement was with Xakabantu Kitchen. There, we also worked on a collage with the kitchen team and children. Ideas were able to be shared and discussed and we had some very interesting conversations.
We began painting in November 2020 and completed the paintings in Feb 2021. All our days spent painting were fun and we loved working as a team, engaging with the community and bringing colour to the sites of the kitchens. We shared meals and spoke about indigenous culture and the importance of health & nature.
We tried to document as much as we could as we went and put a video together to show the process and allow voices of the kitchen to be heard. We were so blessed to have an original soundtrack be composed for our film! Jason Barty and Monwabisi Soulitude Dasi co-created this track to speak of the importance of growing our own food, being connected to the water, soil and working towards uplifting change.
A big thank you to the Muizenberg CAN and individual donors for their support. We also thank Mak1one and Bi’a Kingsley from the Tribe of Gorachouqua !Koraxou//uis for visiting the kitchens and inspiring our thinking and possibilities.
Artists: CareCreative and Dfeat Once (HC360 crew)
Video Editor: Abongile Centane
Original Soundtrack: Jason Barty & Monwabisi Soulitude Dasi
Project Assistance: Asanda Ndudula
