Drawn to help & Help to Draw - Mona Ebdrup on her visual project in South Africa

Mona Ebrup says in an interview: “My plan is to spend three months in Cape Town from mid-February to mid-May 2019 and to visually document that even in one of the most separated societies in the world, people have very similar dreams and visions for the future.”

"The idea is a three-month process, with the first eight weeks consisting of visual thinking workshops for schools, organizations, and businesses. The final four weeks will include a week of graphic recording in various public spaces. These will take place in Cape Town's stunning natural surroundings, on mountaintops and beaches, in high-crime townships, and in very affluent areas. During these graphic recordings, I will ask people in these public spaces about their dreams and hopes for the future. The following week, I will travel to the AfrikaBurn festival, the African equivalent of Burning Man, held in the Tankwa Karoo desert. There, I will also capture visions for the future."

Greatly inspired by Filippo's use of the GraphicWall in Switzerland , I would like to bring the GraphicWall to the desert and to Lion's Head, a mountain in the west, as well as to the city of Cape Town, to Hanover Park, a township with one of the highest murder rates, and to the beach.

This project is part of our “Drawn to Help & Help to Draw” movement by Neuland

Everywhere in the world there should be space for visualization, communication opportunities and the exchange of knowledge and experience.

We, the Neuländer family, are supporting this project with the necessary materials and financial resources as part of our "Drawn to help, Help to Draw" initiative. We are doing this because we hope that the power of visualization and the circus project will connect people in South Africa.

Here you can find the talk with Mona and Sandra about the project

Mona works with a social circus group from Hanover Park that uses circus as a method to get young people out of gangs.

Together they will explore how Mona's visual practice can be part of the circus experience. They will experiment with body work during the graphic recording and investigate how new connections can be created between the performance and the audience.

Mona in another project together with the Social Circus Team in Hanover Park, SA — Photo credits: Mona Ebdrup

Leading up to the tour, Caileigh, a graphic recorder from South Africa, and Mona are working on proposals for the start-up communities in South Africa, and they will be collaborating with some schools and organizations that Mona has worked with previously.