KZN STREET CHALLENGE

Street-level creative interventions can go a long way towards affecting positive social change on the street. The Your Street KwaZulu-Natal Challenge, inspired by Design Indaba, calls on KZN designers, students, residents and creatives to use their creativity to enhance an aspect of their street.

Following the successful Your Street Challenge in Cape Town and Gauteng, Design Indaba launched the Your Street KZN Challenge at the Design Indaba event at Dube TradePort in Durban in November.

A total of R250,000 is up for grabs for designers with the best, most feasible ideas for owning, loving and improving their street, together with a plan for implementing the idea.

“After successfully launching the Your Street Challenge in both Cape Town and Gauteng, we’re excited to be including KZN in this creative venture. We’re looking forward to receiving innovative and transformative ideas for improving the street-level experience in KwaZulu-Natal,” says Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo.

So KZN, Your Street needs you. Think as far as sustainable solutions for low-cost housing or as wide as a city-wide system that makes recycling easier. All original, creative and innovative socially-minded ideas will be considered. The prize money for the Your Street KZN Challenge must be used to implement a creative intervention on a KZN street.

The following cash prizes will be awarded: the first prize of R100,000 will be awarded to the designer that comes up with the best idea and a sound business model that illustrates how their idea can feasibly be implemented.

Three second-place winners will each receive R50,000 for innovative design solutions that can be immediately implemented using the prize money.

Proposals will be judged on the following six cornerstones of design for social change: Generosity: How many people other than you does your design solution effect positively?; International excellence and innovation: Does your design solution stand up to and trump similar world-class ideas? Is it new, original and forward-thinking?; Feasibility: How do you propose to allocate the R50,000?; Fun: How much pleasure, enjoyment, beauty and smiles does your design solution inspire?; Do: Can and will the design solution actually be executed? A better world through creativity: How does your design solution make the world better and further inspire other people to make the world even better?

Design Indaba will appoint its own independent judging panel for the Your Street Challenge to ensure the integrity of the process.

For more information and to enter the Your Street Challenge visit www.designindaba.com/yourstreet. Be sure to enter before January 31 2012.