Follow the yellow brick design road

Sense of civic-mindedness

The YOURSTREET brief is simple: to galvanise the creative community towards a sense of civic-mindedness by asking what you would most like to see changing in your street that could either solve its most pressing problems or that could add the most pleasure, enjoyment, beauty and smileyness.

Examples to inspire range from the local - such as Naidoo's pet project idea of a shelter for the Orange Street flower sellers, potholes and pavement cracks filled by colourful knitting, the successful Velokhaya Cycling Academy in Khayalitsha, the heartwarming Bergie Bin idea suggested by Lauren Fowler, whereby a separate bin could include clean useful items for recycling or leftover food and the Rock Girl Safe spaces project - to the ingenious, zany and fun Utrecht Station slide.

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You don't have to be a designer per se to enter the YOURSTREET design competition; anyone with a passion or an idea can rise to the challenge between now and end August. To this end, prize monies of R50 000 for the most innovative and life-changing idea has been offered up by Design Indaba, with an additional R100 000 for the most fully-fledged and viable implementation strategy, which incorporates revenue streams, sponsors or self-liquidating aspects.

Overseas trends will find fertile ground here

One would hope that via this initiative, trends seen overseas in urban or civic marketing will find fertile ground here, offering opportunities for companies and brands to get involved. As Naidoo pointed out, Charles Lindbergh didn't just fly across the Atlantic; he was incentivised by the US$25 000 prize offered by Raymond Orteig.

In an unplanned bid within a bid, others present that night, including XYZ design consultancy, offered to raise the YOURSTREET prize money, doubling the initial Design Indaba offering by the end of the evening.

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Following the competition launch initiative, Pecha Kucha style presentations introduced the dynamic Thulare Monareng, who hopes to take her Long Street-based Collage Fashion Deli to the world [note: I would scrub floors for this woman]; Yolandi Schreuder, whose amazing BAJA children's table has just been shortlisted for the World Design Impact Prize; the threesome of Roelf Mulder, Byron Qually and Richard Perez on how you can get involved with their Design With Africa platform; trendy design outfit Thingking's on the above-mentioned Khayelitsha cycling academy and Loerie-award-winning tech/gaming designer Michael Wolf on his collaboration called the Open Budget Game.

In a unique position

If you would like to know more or make a presentation at a local Pecha Kucha session, go here.

According to evidence presented on Monday night in Cape Town's favour as a global design capital, we in Africa are in a unique position of having to solve third-world problems using first-world solutions. The YOURSTREET initiative is tight but timed so that our collective fabness can be touted and shouted again when all eyes are upon us, come final WDC2014 voting in October.

Dig deep, Cape Town.

For more on the WDC2014 bid, go to www.capetown2014.co.za/gallery/.