Making a Plan

After spending around three weeks getting to know the Umthombo staff, meeting with some of the groups of street children and making links with other Durban-based arts organisations, Mxolisi met with some of the Umthombo staff to present a list of possible creative programmes. These included a mixture of skills-building and income-generating projects such as jewelery making and plant-pot mosaics, projects aimed at improving the environment around the Umthombo drop-in centre such as painting and DIY projects and therapeutic projects based around issues such as HIV/AIDS. The ideas for some of these projects came from the street children themselves. Mxolisi has also made connections with a number of organisations already running projects in Durban such as Arts for Humanity (www.afh.org.za) and the BAT Centre (www.batcentre.co.za).
Here is a list of some of the possible projects
• H.I.V and AIDs project
• Pot Plant Project
• Mirror Project
• Post Box project
• Fixing and Decorating of the Centre
• Fashion and Silkscreen printing
• Writing, Poetry, Dance and Music
• Jewelry workshop
• Decorating of the drop- in- centre kitchen and bathroom
• Decorating of Coat hangers
• Decorating of surfboards for the surfing team
• Making and decorating of ceramic pieces
• Exchange programs with other organizations and schools
• Postcards, envelopes, papermaking and letter head designs
• Individual workshops by the kids
• Girls beadwork workshop with kids from King George Hospital

Umthombo is currently in the process of obtaining a new 'Safe Space' which will eventually be the most appropriate place to run centre-based programmes. For this reason, it was thought best to postpone the centre-based projects until this new space has been secured.

Mxolisi says:
While doing outreach I’ve noticed that certain groups don’t mix up with certain groups and that most kids don’t want to be taken to the centre. So I have decided that the arts projects will go out to the kids - it will work as outreach. For the first month we will have the project being runned on the streets, but it would be nice to have our own art class as soon as we have a suitable space available [that way we can do more functional stuff with the kids, things like postcards, ceramic pieces, silkscreen printing, fashion and pot plants amongst many other things]. I hope that this arts projects will help the children to have fun, learn more about life skills, learn more about creativity, empower them, motivate the children and help them find ways of earning a living through creativity."