Yeoville Stories -- Yeoville Studio

What makes Yeoville special as a neighbourhood in the minds of its residents and its users? What spaces are used, by whom, how are they used to express people's identities, and why? What are the different experiences of city life that are brought together? How is the area perceived by different groups (the youth and the elder, males and females, various nationalities, those who were born there and those who were not)?

A number of stories have been collected, individual portraits through specific angles have been constructed, in a meaningful interaction between Wits junior and senior researchers and Yeoville community.

Yeoville Studio researchers held workshops throughout the course of 2010 collectively thinking about Yeoville as a place of "ordinary" memory and personal significance, through art making, mapping, photography and storytelling. Some of the questions discussed in Yeoville Stories workshops included:
- What are the journeys that brought you to Yeoville?
- Which places in Yeoville mark important memories or events for you?
- What are your expriences of living in Yeoville?
- What are your hopes for the future, both for yourself and for the suburb?

More explorations through the tool of photography happened in Saunders/ Natal St, where students photographed street life over a period of weeks, then held a public workshop where residents from the street could discuss and comment on the photos, bringing forward their ideas of what the area should or shouldn't be. Everyone got a chance to vote on 50 of the photographs, producing a reflexive portrait of the street.

Negotiating the many forms of accommodation and finding a decent place to stay in Yeoville presents a situation both locally and regionally relevant. Housing stories retraces some residents' life histories through housing trajectories.

In partnership with Yeoville Stories participants, fourth year Architecture Students in 2010 developed a book collecting various aspects of Yeoville histories: Yeoville, A Walk Through Time. A series of thematic visitor’s guides to Yeoville were also produced: the Arts and Culture Tour, Political Tour, Restaurants Guide, and Architectural Walking Tour. Leading on from this initiative, local guides took the brochures and made them their own, providing tours to delegates of an international conference, Memory and City in partnership with Yeoville Studio. The YBCDT was successful in securing funding from the Gauteng Demartment of Tourism, and they'll be using the brochures to train local guides.

The more intimate moments of life in Yeoville were also explored. People meet in Yeoville. People from very different backgrounds, with different stories, expectations, circumstances. Understanding the stories behind these relaitonships represents an emotional journey into people’s dreams and feelings. It is also a way of understanding the reality of life, in Yeoville and beyond. It forms a backdrop to migration, settlement and even xenophobia. In Love Stories, Anthropology Professor Shahid Vawda and interviewer Willy-Claude Hebandjoko worked with Yeoville residents as they told of the joys and challenges of love that crosses national boundaries.

And in 'Leaving Yeoville', stories of nostalgia, dreams and the changing tides of neighbourhood identity and the process of remembering were told in a series of beautiful posters, conceptualised by Sophie Didier and Claire Benit-Gbaffou, assisted by a range of students and featuring photographs from the renowned photographer, Lerato Maduna. The bulk of the research consisted in free flowing interviews of a selection of 15 former residents of all walks of life, gender, nationality and age who all have been residents in Yeoville at some point in their life, some of them a long time ago (1930s), some of them very recently (early 2000s).
The general direction of the interviews was voluntarily left to the interviewee in order to provoke remembering through the evocation of life stories, and to analyse the intersections and parallels between their personal lives and the transformation of the neighborhood.

But Yeoville is a place of political and community activism, dealing with harsh realities, and some of the key figures involved were asked to tell their story for the series of Yeoville Local Activists portraits. Eulenda Mkwanazi and Nicolette Pingo sought out an understanding of what constitutes leadership, what the different forms of activism can take at a local level, the person behind the public face, and also the trade-offs that can result from their involvements.

An upcoming book (1 of 2) to be released in early 2013 will showcase many of these stories for the broader audience. The book aims to give feedback to residents by telling their stories, and tp preserve the rich material collected in interviews performed for (sometimes more constrained) academic pieces.