Malose Malahlela | Research Trip

June 2022 — Multi-Disciplinary

Malose Malahlela co-founded Keleketla Media Arts Project NPC, a civic society organization that implements arts, culture and heritage programmes in Africa and the world. He spent June 2022 in Basel for a research trip to engage with institutions and organisations in the context of the Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project.

The project is concerned with the gathering of resources and data towards lobbying various municipal, regional and governmental stakeholders to rehabilitate the Drill Hall – an arts, culture and heritage infrastructure in the city of Johannesburg. Built in 1904 as a military barrack that also served as a courthouse for the 156 Treason Trial-accused of 1956, The Drill Hall was vacated by the then-SANDF in 1992 leaving the site for occupation after the scrapping of the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act and the Land Act. It is reported that by 2001 close to 350 people (including families) were occupying the Drill Hall. After two fires (in 2001 and 2002) the Drill Hall was renovated to become a “civic centre, a heritage site and a space for culture and creativity accessible to all”. Keleketla! has been invested in the protracted rehabilitation process of the Drill Hall spanning the past 14 years. The archives and data gathered through The Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project are being used to inform advocacy strategies and creative engagements to further the rehabilitation process.