Despite Cape Town’s year as World Design Capital 2014 having come to an end, its design legacy lives on, not only with design projects created for last year’s event, but with future design projects too.
Cape Town Tourism CEO Enver Duminy punts the legacy of World Design Capital 2014 (both are funded by the City of Cape Town!) in a media release sent yesterday: ‘The journey to redesign Cape Town continues in 2015 and beyond, as we overcome our past challenges to create a new city landscape that every citizen can be proud of. Our hope is that every visitor can experience this transformation first hand during their (sic) stay, never forgetting it as they (sic) leave our shores to return home’. Duminy believes tourists come to Cape Town to see its street art, furniture, clothing design, pop-up restaurants and bars, and fashion.
Garreth Bloor, City of Cape Town Mayco member for Tourism, Events, and Marketing, waxed lyrical about the legacy of World Design Capital 2014, sounding almost academic about its benefits: ‘World Design Capital has been an instrument for change locally, opening up opportunities in the design sector for many talented and creative young people and, more importantly, encouraging those outside the traditional design arena to use design to transform their lives. It has ignited a process whereby we look to new innovative ways of doing things, improving service delivery and using that creativity to transform the lives of Capetonians – this is the real legacy of World Design Capital: that we now encourage innovative solutions that will transform the daily lives of those living in Cape Town’.
Design events and facilities in Cape Town that have been influenced or created by World Design Capital 2014 include First Thursdays, the Cape Town Art Fair, Open Design, the V&A Waterfront’s new Watershed, the Table Mountain frames on Signal Hill, the V&A Waterfront, and Blouberg, and the Langa Township Arts Gallery. The Design Indaba is listed too, but has been running in Cape Town for years, an international design event conceptualised and organised many years before World Design Capital 2014 was even thought of! The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) is due to open in the V*A Waterfront Silo section next year, and will represent contemporary art in Art.
Not one of our local or international guests have spoken about World Design Capital 2014 since the beginning of 2014, it clearly not having had any influence on Tourism at all, no surprise really due to the almost non-existent PR support for the year-long event!
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Tel (021) 433-2100, Twitter:@WhaleCottage Facebook: click here
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