Last week  (January 26th) once again  saw the beginning of a lively and re-engaging time at Caversham, both in studio and beyond.At the top of the ongoing activities is the Creative Cultural Dialogue international residency.  This is a 3-week-long interactive forum that has brought a group consisting of writers Mxolisi Nyezwa (Port Elizabeth, SA) and F. Geoffrey Johnson (Atlanta, GA, USA), together with visual artists Tony Bingham (Atlanta, USA, GA) and Sabelo Khumalo (Newcastle, SA). 

Each day of this inspirational journey is being evidenced in the work that has come out over the past days of interaction.  Harmonizing the intensity of the process was the gift of silence which fellows underwent on Wednesday.  Muted conversations with Caversham as both a spiritual as well as a creative space resonated, compelling each to pause.  Reflecting on what it means for creative beings to be in this space at this particular moment, Mxolisi said;

“The past days at Caversham have been brilliant! We had a lively, fruitful and a life changing time.  The sessions with Malcolm and the other artists were super.  I so much enjoyed myself.  The discussions in between the two worlds – Africa and America – brought great insight.  All these for me reaffirmed in a way the commonalities and contradictions between and within the two opposing and sometimes complementary worlds.” 

As part of the experience beyond Caversham, the energetic climate in the studio stretched into the workshops at Ulwazi, where, despite the varied age groups of the kids, the fellows wholeheartedly dug deep to give the kids the experience of a lifetime. We voice our gratitude for these indispensable contributions!   Tony, on time spent at Ulwazi CreACTive Centre:  

“It’s always been my hope to see the visions captured when children of African communities have a pinhole camera.  Today that dream was realized.  With the poets and writers and as a group we created and enacted stories which were then captured by the children during our all morning workshop.  We hope that in leaving behind our material of gel, torch, paper and chemicals that the students will continue to create the paper negatives.  All of which can be scanned into Photoshop, reversed and then printed.  These are images for the world!”