Innovative methods to promote discussion and debate on health issues.
The “Beat TB- its your choice” project run by Dr Tameris (SATVI) in collaboration with the UCT Drama department and UCT Anthropology Department makes use of street theatre and flash mobs at shopping centres and transport hub to address issues around TB, clinical research, stigma and life choices. Actors are members of the Mothertongue group, a community based empowerment group, and community volunteers identified from focus group attendees.
Over the past 4 years Clinical Infectious Disease Research Initiative (CIDRI), a research group in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) has ‘stands’ at the local malls in Khayelitsha, inviting the public to their clinic for more information about the research activity conducted there.
Eh!woza (www.ehwoza.com) is a unusual collaboration between researchers at the (IDM), South African conceptual artist, Ed Young, Ikamva Youth (an educational NGO) and teenage youth from Khayelitsha. In a series of interactive biomedical science workshops youth learn about cutting-edge TB research conducted at the IDM. Eh!woza’s ongoing work extended to the Khayelitsha health forum members in 2015. Two members of the group who attended the training were also given the opportunity to attend the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) conference held in Cape Town in 2015.
Sliwa-Hanhle, Hatter Institute, uses online “African stories telling” videos to educate the public about cardiac disease.
L Davids has conducted television and radio interviews on the use and abuse of skin lighteners.
The Gender Health and Justice Research Unit (GHJRU) organised a Sexual Offences Civil Society Summit in February 2015. Held over 3 days in Delft, the summit focused on the implementation of the Sexual Offences Act of 2007, and was attended by over 200 community members, academics and NGOs working on sexual and gender-based violence, healthcare providers and representatives of government
S O’Connell: Workshops were held with student activists of Cape Town from the 1980s as part of a research project of the Centre for Curating the Archive that culminated in the production of a film documentary. The premiere was fully sponsored and allowed over 600 guests (including students and many from the Cape Flats) to attend the very well received and publicised event at the Baxter Theatre in October 2015.
As part of the Personal Histories project, former residents of Harfield Village and Claremont were brought together through workshops as well as a public event at the Harfield Village Street Festival in early 2015. The interactions proved crucial in the larger project which materialised in an exhibition as well as a film documentary, the latter will be screened as part of a dialogue towards change at St James's Church in Kenilworth in 2016.