Having felt very removed from what Cape Town is doing as host of World Design Capital 2014, I decided to attend its first Pitching session at the German Club yesterday. It was an interesting collection of presentations, aimed at pitching to the audience and the World Design Capital operation company Cape Town Design NPC for R10000 seed money to start the business of their dreams. Out of thirteen presentations, the judges chose to allocate their money to 100 Bicycles.
The German Club venue was quite contradictory to what one associates with design, but one could say that being so old it had some charm and could be described as retro design, with odd camouflage wall effects, and panels of pink fibre glass visible on one side. It must have been an attractive venue to the organisers in having seated at least 100 interested design persons, and a quirky element was the R50 entrance fee buying one a Birkenhead beer or BOS tea, and a packet of popcorn. There were some technical hitches with video presentations, and the quality of presentations varied vastly, from amateurish to sophisticated and high tech. All in all, the event was contradictory to what one expected of and associated with World Design Capital 2014.
The unifying factor of the event was the passion of the presenters, all having a dream project they wanted to share and needed money for to make happen. Midway during the presentations they were advised to scale down their financial demands, to make their projects more approachable. Each presentation team had 5 minutes, and were warned by means of boards how much time they had left. Most chose to ignore the board indicating that the time had run out!
It was a shame that the presentation teams did not have enough time to share who they are, what they do in their day jobs, and how their dream project came about. Presenter Warren Lodge for 100 Bicycles used a jacket, a jersey, and other tops to demonstrate the various target markets to whom a bicycle would be a necessity. The bicycle he brought on stage was in the yellow World Design Capital 2014 colour, and in the short time available to him Warren highlighted that bicycles are not only functional but also are environmentally friendly and play a socio-economic role too. Ultimately Warren wants to communicate the benefits of non-motorised transport. He managed to inspire the Cape Town Design NPC staff to use bicycles to travel to meetings in the city centre in future.
Other interesting projects that were pitched were for Lentegeur psychiatric hospital, planning a Spring project with a vegetable garden, and other forms of environmental regeneration. A volunteer from the audience offered to start the vegetable garden for them. An innovative machine to
offer lighting in township shacks was Safe Township Lighting, in which LED lights are charged by means of a pedal generator, just 20 minutes of pedal power being needed to provide lighting for 30 hours. The Migration is a project using animated illustrations to marry with classic music, to make music more accessible and bringing it to life. The most high tech project pitch was by Virtual Chemistry Lab, a safe and low cost lab table which allows digital simulation and hands-on interaction, and makes science come alive. The project has attracted interest from schools in Cape Town, where it will be test-driven. ZAMANI is a documentary series project highlighting archeological sites in Africa. Open Streets pleads for the use of streets for people to play on, draw on, and to meet on. Pecha Kucha is a long standing project, allowing nine speakers to present projects of passion using twenty 20 second slides.
Despite the grotty venue, the creativity reflected in the fun presentations gave me a first taste of what Cape Town’s role as host of World Design Capital 2014 is all about!
World Design Capital 2014. www.wdccapetown2014.com The next Pitching Session is at The German Club on 25 February at 17h00 – 21h00.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
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