The arts and technology students were responsible for the conceptualisation, design and creation of the structure.           Academics as well as children and adults from the community also participated in the project.

Project provides new insights

Robert says the project gives new insights into leadership roles, interdisciplinary student and staff relationships and community engagement.

“In the context of the #RhodesMustFall and #DecoloniseTheCurriculum movements experienced at South African universities, the role of symbols, whether institutional or national come again to the fore. It serves as means of configuring past historical experience that was often damaging and almost always divisive along gender, race and class lines, and also as means of gesturing toward the as-yet-to-be-realised ‘new’ South Africa.”

He says institutions have not yet begun proactively to consider collective symbol-making as gestural not only of past experience, but also future aspiration.

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