THE Drakenstein Municipality’s “Remembering June 16th” workshop kicked off on Saturday 27 June at the Mbekweni Thusong Centre with more than 100 youths attending, to produce 12 gigantic art pieces to be exhibited in public spaces in Paarl.
Peter Albert Mbobo told the youth about local heroes from Paarl who have passed on, but were apartheid activists. “Today our youth know the lyrics of American rappers but cannot master their own school work,” said Mbobo.
He showed young people that they have role models in their own communities.
The youngsters then used clay to channel all the information they had gained on June 16 to create miniature sculptures representing their feelings about the day.
They were then divided into six groups with the names of two local activists to ensure that they work with new people and created the artwork in honour of the activists.
They were all handed symbols of the struggle to use creatively. Part of the process was to facilitate the youth to collaborate, discuss and negotiate each decision in creating a painting. By Sunday the paintings were complete. For many of them, this was the first time they had painted or used tools like stencilling and projected imaging.
Throughout the two day process, each stage was captured electronically on an online blog and website set up especially for the event by the Drakenstein Municipality.
Mawanda, a participant, said: “I feel really good that I learned so much about what happened in the past in our own area.”
A youth blog (http://remember16june .wordpress.com) was launched.
