Creative Cities in Africa book launch

On 6 June, book contributor Svea Josephy and editor Noëleen Murray launched their book Creative Cities in Africa, edited by Murray and Jonathan Cane.

This was one of the first launches held in the new Michaelis Book Room, envisioned as a space in which traditional academic scholarship meets creativity. It is imagined as a place to showcase research, scholarship and creative projects across many academic disciplines.

Guests included James Ogude the Director of the Centre for the advancement of Scholarship and colleagues from University of Pretoria, where Murray is based, as well as colleagues from UCT, UWC, Free State, colleagues and students from the Michaelis School of Fine Art and guests who joined online, including Jonathan Cane, from the University of Warrick.  

The launch was opened by Pamila Gupta, a Research Professor at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, in conversation with Noëleen Murray.

The contributors to this book all speak to the questions ‘What are creative cities in Africa?’ and ‘What do creative Cities create?’

Michaelis associate professor Svea Josephy, wrote a chapter entitled Dakar: Scaffolding for monuments to the African Renaissance. In this article Josephy linked Cape Town, South Africa and Dakar, Senegal in moments in which monuments were rising and #falling. This allowed Josephy to consider the entangled histories of these two cities on the most westerly and southerly points of continental Africa.

Thank you to Michaelis Galleries, Jade Nair and Moeneeb Dalwai for their help in arranging this event and to Pamila Gupta for her insightful introductory comments on Creative Cities in Africa.