Bio

Rike Sitas, a senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, is an inter-disciplinary urban scholar on the humanities side of social science, straddling sociology, human geography, cultural studies, and urban design. Her research sits within and between two research streams. The first revolves around the role of art, culture, and heritage in urban justice with a particular focus on urban/cultural policy, public space, and cultural citizenship. The second is a budding research focus on culture and technology and African cities, with a particular focus on youth, democratic decision-making, new models of service delivery and the future of work.

Project

The role of arts, culture, and heritage have been long recognised as important to urban development and well being in African cities, and the idea of the creative city has captured the imagination of city officials and cultural practitioners alike. The African Union's Agenda 2063 explicitly calls for the centrality of culture in societies and economies, yet much needs to be done to ensure that culture is leveraged for urban justice as opposed to servicing the interests of elites. Covid-19 has had devastating effects on urban life, exacerbating existing inequalities locally and globally. While mainstream art markets, culture-based tourism, and funding streams for the creative arts have faced numerous challenges due to the pandemic, cultural and creative activity still fundamentally shapes how people make a life in big and small cities alike. As part of this residency I am excited to work collectively to shape an interdisciplinary agenda for collaborative research. I hope to bring particular reflections on how, even under duress, local cultural producers in South Africa are working critically, politically, and propositionally around issues of belonging, care, resistance, repair, and solidarity.