Durban — Four schools in the greater Durban area were engaged in arts workshops as part of the Deep Blue Sea Creative Waste Management Project.
The project was led by Umcebo Designs, which makes handmade decor items inspired by flora and fauna themes using galvanised wire, glass beads, recyled and reclaimed materials. It aimed to show pupils and teachers how to re-purpose waste plastic. The project was facilitated and funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, linked to the Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA) conference which will be held in Durban June 12-14.
The initiative is linked to World Oceans Day 2024; which was commemorated on June 8, with the theme ‘Waves of Change: Collective Actions for the Ocean.’
Workshops were held with the Enviro Club at Manor Gardens Primary; with pupils and teachers from Golden Hours Special Education School in Durban North; Bright Future in Newlands East; and Ningizimu School for the Severely Mentally Handicapped in Montclair.
Three separate day-long creative arts workshops were run by artists and former teachers Robin Opperman and Ujala Sewpersad from Umcebo Design working with plastic waste to create art, and learning about recycling, and the importance of keeping our rivers, waterways and ultimately oceans clean.
Opperman explained that eventually three tuna-fish wire gabions would be decorated with individually decorated scales made from recycled plastic.
Each of the scales made to clad the sculptures, will have a message written on it by a pupil, highlighting the fact that plastic needs to be intercepted and removed from our rivers before it reaches seas or goes into landfills.
This will prevent microplastics contaminating seas and marine life and also ensure that the plastic does not go into landfills, where it contributes to high levels of methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, which will heat up our planet, causes rising sea levels and adversely affect food production.
“The delegates to the conference will also make cladding for the fish from recycled plastic and adorn these with environmental messages. We hope that these artworks will then go on permanent display and will raise awareness of these issues and the potential for creative waste management to assist in combating plastic pollution and its impact on our planet's water, climate and ultimately, all of our futures on planet earth,” Opperman said.
Umcebo Design makes handmade, to order, décor items inspired by flora and fauna themes using galvanised wire, glass beads, acrylic crystals, recycled and/or reclaimed materials and more to create bespoke items. They also run workshops with schools and communities where they emphasise the importance of re-purposing discarded materials and recycling, and they also specialise in public art projects.
This year’s project continues the conversations from the fabulously original and quite extraordinary audio/sensory art installation last year, entitled Heavy Waters (dubbed “The Mussel Organ”) the brainchild of multimedia and audio artist, Stef Veldhuis, from Utrecht in The Netherlands and staged in the Bond Shed on Point last year as a companion initiative to the #cocreateMyCity conference on urban water challenges, hosted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa.
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