Making the city livable with books
The Literary District’s goal is to help improve experience and perception of the city by creating a literary district in a walkable swath of downtown Johannesburg, to highlight the city’s reading culture, past and present. They want to improve coordination and communication among writers, booksellers, libraries, schools and publishers, and to create a single point of contact for them to communicate with the public.
They want to take the dynamic, existing programming and bring it into public spaces – whether that’s a book launch by a major author or storytelling sessions for schoolchildren. Making use of their SEF part-time workers they will bolster their current efforts at achieving this vision. Participants will work across various levels of business to help with firstly keeping the LitDistrict cleaner and safer (sweeping, scrubbing, gardening, replacing utility covers) and improving participation in events and public programming (marketing, eCommerce, nurturing relationships with community partners).
Cleanliness, Gardening and Wayfinding:
• Expand the existing work of tending to neighborhood planters, cleaning, and maintaining Lit District signage and way-finding devices
Storytime in the Park:
• Park activation of JICSEP allocated Inner City parks, including hosting storytime sessions and managing and maintaining street libraries
• Roll out of street libraries in JICSPE allocated Inner City parks, subject to budget availability
Book Events:
• Partners in the district host book events practically every week. Lit District is bringing some of these events into public spaces like Ernest Oppenheimer Park and City Library to make them more accessible. To accommodate covid precautions, and to reach audiences beyond their geographic footprint, they live-stream most of their events either as purely digital events or as hybrid events. This component involves learning how to set up lights, sound and other digital equipment, work with cameras, and manage online events.
