Ballito Made Beautiful on Mandela Day
Creative Artists with an unconventional method to beautify a city:- Reverse Graffiti
Ballito locals Tamryn Lambson and Dustin Scott have teamed up with Warrick Shannon of Durban’s Coffee Creative Studio in an unconventional initiative to express their artistic spirits and support a worthy cause: Reverse Graffiti otherwise known as ‘Green Graffiti.’
With Carla Geyser of the One in a Million campaign, the trio of creatives chose to use their charitable spirit for International Mandela Day on a dual cause: raise money for rhino’s in crisis and add a dash of creative genius to Ballito Drive.
Reverse Graffiti is a lot of hard work. Ideally, a dirty, grimy cement wall is selected, a design created for the backdrop and then hours and hours of scrubbing with steel brushes lifts layers of grime in selected sections to reveal a miraculous etching from within the dirt!
The theme on the Ballito wall combines a freehand rendition of Nelson Mandela (courtesy of freelance graphic designer Scott), a large Rhino (Lambson’s work) and finally various African themed patterns. Zap-signs were integral in making the work of the team easier: they sponsored all lazer cut stencils for the pattern work, cutting the work program from days down to just many hours.
For the young team, they hope to take this form of beautiful Graffiti further to a form of Unconventional Advertising. They see this type of work as the ideal CSI initiative for companies – creating something beautiful in places of grubbiness. Soot laden freeway bridges, older run-down cement walls and generally any urban ‘grey’ area is ripe for their work of upliftment.
Warrick (Wok) estimates Reverse Graffiti walls could last between 5 and 10 years, depending on the type of cement on a wall. The Ballito Drive wall should look beautiful for between 1 and 2 years, he said.
The group have formed an organization Urbanloveza and are noticing walls EVERYWHERE which could do with their touch.
Umhlanga Boardwalk may be next on their hit list…
Although no formal permission was asked (or given) from Kwadukuza Municipality, the resounding response from residents and passers-by on the route to Ballito’s tourist centre is one of “THANK YOU – we LOVE what you guys are doing.”
ShowMe Ballito looks forward to the day when more grimey roadsides will look as beautiful.