Summary of 2011 Workshops

Still of Workshop .A.Melck 2011

The conclusion of a series of twelve workshops, held in conjunction with Carin Combrinck the (University of Pretoria's Architecture Department ) and the community was held in Slovo Park. The intention of the final workshop was to develop action plans and development strategies for implementation in 2012.

The first day of the workshop was opened by a presentation by Ms Carin

Combrinck ( UP Lecturer )and consisted of a visual summary of all the workshops that had taken place this year.These workshops were themed with the intention of trying to identify Slovo's unconscious collective vision.Below is a summary of the workshops.

Information is still to be collected and collated, but the conclusion of the study will be found in a phd paper by Ms Combrinck, concerning participative research methods.

The implementation of community identified projects will take place next year. The University of Pretoria's Architecture Department will make itself available as a resource or consultant, when Slovo Park initiates the new projects.

Architectural Student Congress 2011

ASC 2011 - NMMU

The Slovo Park Project was presented at the 2011 Architectural Student Congress held in Port Elizabeth.

Being very busy with our Master Dissertation, we only flew in to present the story of Slovo, in hopes of sharing the project with the students of the country. The fact that the Des Baker Competition brief was for a small rural school, we felt this would be n aspiring project to showcase.

Due to a scheduling conflict, the presentaton was seen by only a handful of students and lectures. Although this happens at these types of events, it was a dissapointment as we feel this project has much to offer and inspire students of South Africa.

Below is a short video we included in the presentation.

On a happier note, we made contact with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's Architectural Department who were very excited about possibly doing a similar project in their area.

We also found that a group of University of Kwa-Zulu Natal's 3rd year class had seen the website earlier and, inspired from the story, had started their own project in their project.

In all a good trip in light of the organizational mishaps.

Looking forward to what else will come from this.

Community Workshops

For the next few weeks workshops will take place in Slovo Park with the aims of eventually trying to identify the community's architectural vision for the future of Slovo Park.

The research team is comprised of the members of the community together in partnership with the research interests of the University of Pretoria

The Research Team

The Research team thus far consists of:

Our team has kindly offered their time, in participating in the bi-monthly workshops held in Slovo .The outcome of the efforts of the research team will be posted shortly,as the process gains momentum