Our first set of workshops took place in Durban in June 2018, as part of ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Arts).

The workshops were hosted at KZNSA Gallery on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of June @ 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood.

Further workshops were run on the following Thursday with Ikamva Youth, as well as a rather impromptu series of workshops at the Life Hacking exhibition’s opening event, where the “lab” at the KZNSA Gallery became a hub of interactivity and making (not necessarily sticking to the curriculum however!).

While walk-ins were welcomed, we did pre-organise several groups to participate, starting with 20 learners from Durban Girls High School on the first day of the ISEA workshop program. We then ran approximately 100 workshops with learners from Ikamva Youth, an organisation that describes itself as “equip[ping] learners from disadvantaged communities with the knowledge, skills, networks and resources to access tertiary education and/or employment opportunities once they matriculate.”

The remainder of the workshop participants comprised interested passersby and their children, ISEA visitors and participants, and local Durbanites who had access to the ISEA program. Overall, we were consistently surprised by the creative diversity of the participant’s inventions.

Another approximately 50 workshops of a slightly more complex nature were run at Baleni Senior Secondary School as part of the Igqangi Project

“an innovative initiative working to improve the educational outcomes of learners at rural Eastern Cape high schools.” Workshops at Baleni Senior Secondary School were held on the 2nd and 3rd of July, as part of their winter school program.