South African Talent Breaking Through

I had a great conversation with Jon Cherry who runs a experiential marketing start-up in Cape Town, South Africa called Cherryflava. Beyond just the state of social media in South Africa (Jon's blog had won an Ogilvy-sponsored award this year as a best blog), we spoke about talent and artists in South Africa. 

One of Jon's points - that there is a lot of under-leveraged talent in the South African creative community. He was speaking broadly about all types of art, design and craft. And he was hopeful if not bullish even, about there being great artisitic talent just waiting to be combined with innovative marketing and product development smarts. South African talent would become more of a regional if not global cultural force.

African Cartel

I couldn't help but think of his POV when I cam across African Cartel, a marketplace for African Artists (clearly not just 'South' Africa). While I believe Jon had more product design and development in mind vs. pure art, African Cartel is doing its part to showcase artists via digital marketing. Their video on the "Robot Artists" - artists who specilaize in 'township art' - is really well made. Smartly, it tells a full story of the artists - their particular circumstances including a fairly rough marktplace where they sell their paintings at busy intersections. African Cartel offers an alternative. 

Their mission is simple:

"The mission of African Cartel is to provide a platform to showcase talented African artists to tell their story and provide a platform to market and sell their art."

Add to this Cape Town's ambition to be the World Design Capital in 2014 and I get a picture of what Jon is talking about. Not only is there loads of talent there, but clever use of the Internet may bring them to the world faster than anything else.

I hope South Africa wins the bid for WDC2014. Regardless, I believe that folks like Jon Cherry and African Cartel will demonstrate to the world, the strengths of South African and African creativity. 

*Photography of Leenon Matthew's art from African Cartel's web site. 

Comments

[Mark_forrester]

Thanks for the feature John.

Whole-heartedly agree with Jon's point that there is a lot of under-leveraged talent in the South(-ern) African creative community. Whilst the artisans we work with might not be the exact group he is referring to, it amazes us at African Cartel how there is so much creativity and positivity amongst the robot artists, who have unbelievable obstacles and challenges in their daily lives. It is most humbling working with these guys.

Although there is much logistics we are currently dealing with, working with street sellers who are very much internet/social media novices, and coming to terms with the intricacies and laws surrounding exporting and shipping, we are all learning lots and our artist's work is finally reaching a far bigger global market than they/we could ever imagine.