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A piece of art is uplifting the spirits of a local old age home’s staff and residents.
Hanging on the driveway wall at the entrance to Neighbourhood Old Age Homes (Noah), in Regent Street, the painting has a symbolic significance – it was created on National Women’s Day, Thursday 9 August.
“We absolutely love the design and feel we are definitely more Instagram worthy now! Our clients remark on the art daily and we are really proud to have this art on our wall,” says Jane Mills, social enterprise development and communications manager at Noah.
Noah’s mission is to restore dignity, respect and life affordability to as many social pensioners as possible. The home runs a number of projects, including a secondhand shop, The Trestle Table, from the driveway, selling donated clothing, furniture, bric-a-brac, household items, linen and towels, generating income for the pensioners and for Noah.
Mills says management wanted to make the shop a more inviting space to visit and shop at and felt that “some urban art” would do that well.
“We wanted something in keeping with our community, our ethos of ‘home, health and happiness for every social pensioner’ as well as being something inspiring and fun,” explains Mills.
She says that RisCura, a Cape Town organisation that helps pension fund trustees invest their members’ funds, made the art project possible.
“RisCura very kindly offered to help us make this dream come true. They facilitated a meeting with Wayne Beukes, (urban artist and designer) and we got working on conceptualising a sketch. What made this really special was that RisCura staff paid for this initiative themselves.
“RisCura, Noah and Wayne Beukes have all come together to create this mural in the hopes that it will attract more passersby to Noah’s secondhand store, which funds the foundation, which works hard to better the lives of the elderly,” says Mills.
She says RisCura has supported Noah in a number of ways for many years via support of the home’s community-based housing and other support programmes for social pensioners. “One of the ways they also continue to contribute to us is through Mandela Day.”
RisCura’s spokesperson, Nabelah Fredericks, says: “We were delighted at the opportunity to assist with such an innovative project.”
She says the mural was funded through personal staff donations and matched by a donation from the company’s social responsibility budget.
Beukes, also known as Conform, created the mural.
