With funding from Art for Action SA (a creative NGO established during the Covid -19 lockdown), donations by wallpaper artist Robin Sprong, and a creative map by Design Time (a Cape Town-based school of interior design), Friedmann set about transforming the drab surroundings into a children’s wonderland. With a group of 20 dedicated volunteers, she spent months working over weekends, sanding, stripping, priming, and painting - performing an alchemy that has produced an astounding transformation.
During the week, when the waiting room continues to be operational, she has witnessed the children’s delight at the growing cornucopia of colour, books, games, and fluffy toys. While they – like Friedmann as a child - might enter here burdened by family trauma, they now leave this safe, creative, comforting, and fun-filled space, hopefully, on the path to self-restoration, healing, and hope. “For as long as we view our court system as an adversarial court system, we neglect the real victims of the system, which are children...” Advocate Sabelo Sibanda
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Dec 2022 | Collective Action Magazine
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