There are many reasons why you can easily fall in love with South Africa: amazing people, breathtaking landscapes, the best light and colours in the world (that’s why the modelling world is taking over Cape Town in season), unforgettable wildlife impressions, beautiful coastlines, delicious food and tasteful wines. That’s why tourists come to visit  South Africa and return home with the most stunning photos taken and evening filling stories to tell.

Then, there are other reasons.. reasons that you might only find out after having been here for longer and seen the prettiness behind the prettiness.  What makes South Africa special and loveable for me is the amount of  CREATIVITY and OPPORTUNITIES – or rather the opportunities to be creative. South Africa is country with a huge potential of amazingly creative people. It feels like that the country’s regime was prohibiting any sort of creative and innovative projects for such a long time, that now there is a huge backlog demand. The list is long.. from fashion designers who are entering the world stage of catwalk to community beadwork art being sold in fancy shops in Europe.

It goes further.. the buzz-word nowadays being URBANISATION , it seems to me that South Africa is creating its very own urban mosaic and I am proud to spread the word here about one particular project in which one of my oldest friends from South Africa is involved in. I think that this video describes the project pretty good.

http://www.designindaba.com/video/your-street-cape-town-winners-urban-mosaic

The Urban Mosaic project, one of the winners of the Your Street Cape Town Challenge, will be helping to prevent shack fires with a fire-retardant paint. At the same time designers Y Tsai, Porky Hefer, Ashely Stemmet and Matthew Skade aim to beautify the townships with paintings of cultural icons and symbols.