Anti-Apartheid Legacy Murals is a partnership project between CREATURE and the Anti-Apartheid Legacy Centre. It is a co-created public artwork for the Anti-Apartheid Legacy Centre at Penton Street, the former London headquarters of the African National Congress. The project commemorates and reinterprets the anti-apartheid movement’s history, highlighting its ongoing relevance and global resonance.
Through a series of arts-based, community-led workshops, the mural will be designed collaboratively with local residents, the South African diaspora, and target groups connected to the Centre. These sessions will explore themes of solidarity, resistance, migration, racial justice, and South African culture, ensuring that underrepresented voices and lived experiences shape the final work.
This initiative challenges traditional heritage narratives by centring community agency and enabling inclusive participation across diverse abilities and knowledge levels. The process fosters dialogue, creativity, and reflection on structural inequalities and shared histories.
Building on a pilot study, Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Material Culture, Heritage and Now, the current project asks:
- What defines the heritage and legacy of the anti-apartheid movement, and how has it been visually represented?
- Who holds this legacy as meaningful, and why?
- How does this history resonate today—across communities, locally and globally?
Image: Speculative image, showing paint brushes against a wall. It should be noted that the medium and design of the mural will be decided collaboratively as part of the development process.
Project details
Research Team
Team member(s)
Project partner(s)
Caroline Kamana, Director, Anti-Apartheid Legacy Centre
Funder(s)
Duration
2025-2027
More about the project
- To co-create a research-informed, community-led public mural at the new Centre of Memory and Learning on Penton Street, London, reflecting the history and contemporary relevance of the anti-apartheid activism.
- To engage local communities and key stakeholders through a series of art-based research workshops that explore and interpret the ongoing relevance of anti-apartheid heritage.
- To document and share the project’s outcomes through the production of a short film. To explore oral histories and community engagement with anti-apartheid heritage, culminating in academic publications.