Right at the core of Hillbrow’s vibrant community, amid the all-pervasive poverty and inner-city degradation, stands the brightly restored Mock – Tudor style mansion, now home to the Market Theatre Foundation’s, Windybrow Arts Centre. When you speak to Gerard Bester, Head of the Centre, about the role it plays in the area, he becomes animated. This is because it is more than just a classic arts institution. Whether by default or design, it is vital to Hillbrow, it is the artistic heartbeat of this community, and its contemporary existence is inextricably tied to the fate of Hillbrow.
Bester and his colleagues have many touching stories of young people who, having come to this centre, have been inspired and learnt life skills through experiences such as learning to read, improved school results, performing on stage, working with professional artists, international travel and developing their potential for future career choices or financial benefit.
Of most importance are the lives of children and young people from the surrounding area who have found a home at The Windybrow Arts Centre, a safe place, a place of sanctuary, positivity, personal growth, creative expression and hope.
Zintle Radebe, the Centre’s Programmes Co-ordinator explains that their three main projects, the Afternoon and Weekend Arts Programme, the Literacy and Homework Support Programme and the work of the Kwasha! Theatre Company are specifically designed for primary and high school-going children and youth, and are aligned with the Department of Education’s Curriculum. It is through these regular activities and through partnership and collaboration with artists and arts institutions of all disciplines, both local and international that the participants are exposed to a broad range of possibilities for transformative experiences.
The building itself has also undergone a number of transformations over the past 128 years and been owned, managed and patronised by a very varied and ever-changing demographic. Designed by Architect William Leck, it was built for the wealthy Reunert family, who named their home Windybrow, after that of their favourite poet Robert Southey, in memory of England’s Lake District. They took up residence in 1896 and lived here for the next 25 years.
It seems apt that from its very beginning, the house has been associated with and used for the pursuit of learning and artistic endeavour. Theodore Reunert based many of his philanthropic activities, projects and fund raisers at Windybrow. In 1889 he was a founder of the Johannesburg Public Library, and Chairman of the Library Committee. He was a founding member of The Witwatersrand Council of Education which was formed to subsidise teaching and establish a system of higher education. This became the Transvaal Technical Institute, and later, the University of the Witwatersrand. Reunert helped to establish the first three Johannesburg Government High Schools and four of its most prestigious private schools. In 1922, Reunert was awarded an Honorary Degree of Literature, in recognition of his lifelong service to education and culture, by the newly established University of the Witwatersrand.
In Johannesburg’s early days as a gold-rush mining town, wealthy investors and business opportunists made their colonial homes in the image of their English and European roots, a hankering reminder of a very different time and place. As the town burgeoned and attracted immigrants, fortune-seekers, labourers, mavericks, pioneers and speculators from around the world, the surrounding farmlands were bought up and divided into business, retail, industrial, recreational and residential areas, and Hillbrow grew into an upper-middle income flatlands of high-rise apartment blocks and shopping malls. From rural backwater, to farm-land to the pulsing hub of Hillbrow, and the neighbouring Doornfontein, Berea, Yeoville and Troyville areas, the Windybrow has seen it all.
Since becoming a home and workplace for the Reunert family and staff, Windybrow has had as many guises as an actor. Sequestrated during the Anglo-boer War …(DATE), and used as General French’s Officers’ Mess, it has since the early 1920’s been a Boarding House, Johannesburg’s first nursing training institution, the B.G. Alexander College in 1947 and eventually in 1974 the Windybrow building was declared a National Monument and was left to fall into dilapidation and informal housing.
In 1985 the future of the house was assured when it was transferred to the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal to become a Theatre and Festival venue with bar and café. It was then presented to Johannesburg as a gift from the province, to mark the city’s centenary and declared a Cultural Institution in 1986. Bobby Heaney became the first Artistic Director of the Windybrow Theatre and in 1987 the Nurses’ Home Hall was converted into a theatre by Stan Knight and Andrew Botha. In 1993 Walter Chakela was appointed as the first Black Artistic Director and CEO of Windybrow Centre for the Arts in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. For the next decade, he created a theatrical hub for both aspiring and established practitioners and opened up opportunities for many African writers and artists.
As South Africa grew and developed, so the structure and nature of its cities changed. As many of Johannesburg’s wealthier residents and their businesses moved to the northern suburbs, The Windybrow Theatre complex was robbed of both acting talent and patrons. This is as poor families, a mix of South Africans from the townships and the rural areas, and a predominantly African immigrant community made Hillbrow their home. The centre found itself forced by circumstances beyond its control, to reinvent itself. This is how it has become so much more than its original purpose and core duties of an Art Centre. This is as the institution has eventually found its place and role in meaningfully developing talent of the youth in this marginalised community. The centre had to come up with innovative, out of the box programming ideas to remain relevant within this poor community that grapples with social challenges beyond the scope of art, including poverty, crime, violence, overcrowding, and in some cases, statelessness.
Refurbished, razed, ransacked, reinvented and always of service to the people in and around it, The Windy brow has remined and rerisen, Phoenix like to an exciting, new revival!
“We realised that we could not engage meaningfully with this community without involving the children. This is why we have designed programmes and activities that involve the youth from the surrounding communities, creating a conducive environment for self-expression,” says Zintle. “Our multi-disciplinary arts programmes include theatre, poetry, music, dance and visual art as after school programmes.” she adds.
“We have recently recruited interns to assist our regular facilitators in the literacy programme, drawing students from local universities, such as the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Johannesburg. The initiative is working very well with the interns having an opportunity to contribute something in teaching the youth, some of whom struggle to read at the beginning, but after getting assistance, actually become A learners. The interns receive a stipend as they gain work experience. This is something that will also be useful to them once they graduate and start looking for work,” explains Bester.
On any given afternoon, the Windybrow Arts Centre is indeed a hive of activity and artistic energy, as young people, whose ages range between six and eighteen years, are busy with homework, projects, reading sessions, visual arts, theatre-making and educational outdoor play. The bedrooms, ballroom, entertainment areas, staff quarters, stables, attics and basements now house the Centre’s two Pan African Library and Reading Lounges for both adults and children which has a selection of books in all South African languages, rehearsal rooms, dance and music studios, offices, meeting and training rooms and exhibition space. Sadly the three Theatres, the Dalro, the Adcock-Ingram and the Trustbank Theatres have long ago been looted and stripped of all their furnishings and equipment, but Bester and his team are working tirelessly towards the full restoration of these facilities.
“Going forward, we are exploring the possibilities of working together with the other institutions that are also part of The Market Theatre Foundation. For example, those among our youth that have a talent and interest in photography should be able to further their studies at the Market Theatre Photo Workshop, and those interested in a career in acting should be able to proceed and audition at the Market Theatre Laboratory. In future we are looking at the possibility of a seamless progression for talented youth from here to the other two institutions within the Market Theatre Foundation,” Bester says boldly.
The Windybrow Arts Centre is today a home to the youth who have found a safe environment, where they have an opportunity to explore and find themselves through these various activities. Having overcome its complicated past, The Windybrow Arts Centre is on solid ground and striving for a future that carries immense promise. Despite the social challenges that the children face in the community and at home, here at Windybrow their hopes of a brighter future can be realised.