00:00:00
Speaker 1: One of the wonderful wonderful I suppose it's it's not unintended. The consequence it is actually intentional, is that you'll get to learn and to fall in love with your city of Johannesburg. Again. Joining me on the line is Dawn Robertson. Dawn is a visitor and creative economy catalyst at Josie My Josie down A very good morning and welcome to the show. I was lucky enough to do a visit to Johannesburg in Victoria last week with my family. The week before rather with my family and because some of them, including my twelve year old nephew, were visiting joe Burgh for the first time. We got on the hop on hop off bus through the CBD of Johannesburg connecting to Soeto, and it was the best decision I could have ever made because the amount I learned about the history of the city of Johannesburg is extraordinary. There is so much history to that city, isn't.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: There There is? And yes, thank you for having us this morning, albeit also early. Yeah, Johannesburg is an amazing city. It's the city that you fall in love with. You know, so many of us who live and work in Johanna's Boy are actually migrants into the city and you fall in love with the city. It's a city that people tend to drive through and not ever think about walking through. And even before walk the talk as Josie or Josie, my mission was to get people to come back into the city, to explore the city, to fall in love with the city, and to walk the city, to get onto the pavements, you know, and to see the city as a working progress, and to switch the story that so many of us have here in Joelburg about the city being a broken city to the city being a city that's so filled with possibilities. You know. Local tourism. We know COVID taught us that if you don't build a local tourism base, you are going to be in trouble when you know, issues hit you internationally. And from a South African tourism's perspective to our local tourism bodies, the mission has really been to get people to be tourists locally, and I think we've succeeded. I think all of us in Jobig and the rest of the country comes flooding down into Cape Town. You experience that all the time. We've started to kind of travel across the country, but we still kind of focus on the main nodes. You know, we go to Cape Town or we go to Durban. Jahannesburg is still very much a transit city, even for international visitors. You use it to fly into our cambo and you fly out to wherever you're going. So our mission is really to get people to come back into the city, to fall in love with the city. And that's because the visitor economy, as we like to refer to it, because it looks at the entire value chain, puts money into local hands. It supports local traders, small businesses. Can it bring safety back to our streets. If the streets are full of people, the streets are safer, And.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Let's talk more about what you're doing to bring safety back into the streets, because I imagine a lot of people think of the CBD of Johannesburg and one of the first things that comes to mind is that it is no longer safe to be in that city, which which is not true of everywhere in Joanna'sburg CBD.
00:03:23
Speaker 2: I think, I think what you're saying, you know, it goes for every city, not just in South Africa, in the world, or it's in the entire world. You know, you've got to know what are the safe, saft safe places to be and where are the places that you need to be a little bit more vigilant. Johannesburg is definitely one of the places we know which areas are safe and which areas you shouldn't venture into. And as Josie by Jersey, you know, we've got five areas of work that we work in in the bottom and the first layer, you know, if you think of something like Measlow's hierarchy, the very first layer is safety, so security and environment. So we need to make the city safe and we need to clean up the city. That's where it all starts. And in terms of work, the talk, you know, safety is the first question that was addressed. And so in the CBD, security is very tightly managed, you know, and this walk is not above a casual you know, wander through the inner city. It's through very carefully planed routes where there are marshals, there are medics, JMPD, SAPs, private security companies very visible all along the route from the start to the finished and roads are managed. I mean just this morning when I got up to take this call from you saw the routes, the list of where all the JMPD, the SAPs, ex sextor are going to be posted along the routes to make sure that the route is calm and it's it's family safe. And we've also got very clear activation points with water and support from elikus and stuff in case anybody else listening to you talking to the lady about you know, having the right shoes on and stuff like that. So there are these points along the way to make sure that you're well, and there's also you know, just in terms of how you get into the city, I'm not sure if people know that you can take the hard train. You park at any hard train station across you one rand, you take the hard train, you get into Park Station. From Park Station, you crossover, you get onto a prossed train which takes you right to Joebigh Stadium. You get off the train, you walk through the tunnel and you're in the stadium. So we've thought about every aspect of it, but generally from a Josie in my Josie perspective, one of our key things is safety. And one of the key things that we're doing in terms of safety is that we've put over twenty two hundred solar street lights into the city to date to light up the city, because I mean crime hid in dark corners, so from a night time perspective, we've lit up the city. We also work with the Marishi Institute. So the Marishi Institute has established from two years ago what we call the Security Mastery Academy, and each year they're taken an average of one hundred and fifty young students into a three year course in security. And the first court of these already out on the streets. So when you walk through inter Citado, and if you noticed it when you were on the bus, you will see these marshals out there with Josie My Josie bibbs and jackets and stuff on, actually you know, patrolling the streets. And these young people that are on this course are not just people that are going on like a six week security course. They're on a three year intensive internationally benchmark security courts to make the city safer.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: I imagine Dawn there wish is for the tens of thousands who they're participating in the walk, the Talk the Sunday that they will fall in love with the city again and want to visit it and visited and visited and visited again and again and again beyond the Sunday.
00:07:05
Speaker 2: That's exactly the intention, and I think that's exactly why we got involved as Josey by Josie, and from my particular perspective and the workstream that I lead. You know, for me, these three routes that you can take through the city are you know, they turn it from a drive through city that you do with your windows closed and your doors locked, into a lived in story, so you get to explore the city. And the five kilometer, I always say, is like a first date with the inner city. You know, you walk through the short five kilometers on the east side what we call the East Village of the city, and you look at the history of that place, you look at the arts organizations and things that have sprung up over there, and you start to feel the change in the town. When you get onto the eight kilometer, you start to see more of the city's hustle, the traders, the markets are creative corners. You start to feel the feet on pavement and how money changes hands and the energy of the inner city. Albeit it's a Sunday and you won't see that like you see it in the week, but you'll start to feel that bars in the city. And the fifteen kilometer, I always say, is for the committed city lovers. Yeah, you're going to see the grift and the grits of the city, the graft, the repaired spaces, the lit up corridors, the people that are bringing Josie back block by block, and you're going to pass a whole lot of interesting spaces, places that you passed on the bus for example. So the fifteen is probably the one that's really going to get you to see interesting places across the city. You're going to see things like Constitution Hill, which is the only World Heritage site that we have in the city, and you're going to actually walk through Constitution Here, you're going to see the flame of democracy. You're going to walk over the Nelson Mandale Bridge and you're going to see what we've done to the store that bridge. You're going to come past the Market Theater, which is fifty years old this year and has been, as you know, the site of Struggle Theater and has played such a big role in changing how we see not just Johannesburg, but the entire country through the work that they put on there. So we're doing activations at a lot of these points. So at the Market Theater, for example, we will walk past and celebrate fifty years of the Market Theater. We'll walk across Mary Fitzgerald Square, and we are going to be celebrating jazz musicians, particularly jazz musicians that have passed away this year with Nicky's Oasis, we're going to be doing activations in main Street. We do something, but you're also having cape on you know, the whole open Streets movement. You have brief Street Sundays, and we have main Street Sundays, and that has really that was so successful, and we're treating the walk the talk almost like Street Sundays on steroids. It's not just one street, it's the entire city. But when you walk through Main Street you're going to get a taste of what Main Street Sundays feels like because we're activating it with activities that would have happened on a normal Main Street day. Motherning Arts Unmine, you could have passed Barbiicane. This is one of my favorite ones. Barbiecans used to be when it was built, the highest skyscraper in Johannesburg and Africa five stories high. Albeit and it's just been restored by a developer who bought it and fixed it up and it just to be known as the New York of Joeburg kind of thing. And we do in activations around the Barbicane. It's an Art Deco building. We're going to bring in cars and people in period costumes so as you walk past the Barbicane you can get a feel for what it was like in the heyday and you know, have photo opportunity. Were doing the same thing with the Rand Club, which is an edwardume book. We're working with the James Horme Museum of Transport and they are bringing out the Mayor's car, the Rolls Royce from nineteen thirty or so. Let's get repassed outside the land Club again with people in period costumes so you can have you know, pictures taken with that. So the entire route has been lit up with these different activations and also our corporates are also doing activations all along the route.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: The otherwise I'm going to spoil thans going to be a wonderful experience for all accounts. Thank you very much. Don Robertson is the visitor and creative economy catalyst at Josie My Josie Do go to the website Josiemijosei dot com to learn more about the work that they do, and of course go to ProMedia plus dot com for all the details about the seven or two Josie My Josie Walk the Talk, which is taking place this Sunday. You're listening to Cape talking seven oh two. It's just after five
Speaker 1: One of the wonderful wonderful I suppose it's it's not unintended. The consequence it is actually intentional, is that you'll get to learn and to fall in love with your city of Johannesburg. Again. Joining me on the line is Dawn Robertson. Dawn is a visitor and creative economy catalyst at Josie My Josie down A very good morning and welcome to the show. I was lucky enough to do a visit to Johannesburg in Victoria last week with my family. The week before rather with my family and because some of them, including my twelve year old nephew, were visiting joe Burgh for the first time. We got on the hop on hop off bus through the CBD of Johannesburg connecting to Soeto, and it was the best decision I could have ever made because the amount I learned about the history of the city of Johannesburg is extraordinary. There is so much history to that city, isn't.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: There There is? And yes, thank you for having us this morning, albeit also early. Yeah, Johannesburg is an amazing city. It's the city that you fall in love with. You know, so many of us who live and work in Johanna's Boy are actually migrants into the city and you fall in love with the city. It's a city that people tend to drive through and not ever think about walking through. And even before walk the talk as Josie or Josie, my mission was to get people to come back into the city, to explore the city, to fall in love with the city, and to walk the city, to get onto the pavements, you know, and to see the city as a working progress, and to switch the story that so many of us have here in Joelburg about the city being a broken city to the city being a city that's so filled with possibilities. You know. Local tourism. We know COVID taught us that if you don't build a local tourism base, you are going to be in trouble when you know, issues hit you internationally. And from a South African tourism's perspective to our local tourism bodies, the mission has really been to get people to be tourists locally, and I think we've succeeded. I think all of us in Jobig and the rest of the country comes flooding down into Cape Town. You experience that all the time. We've started to kind of travel across the country, but we still kind of focus on the main nodes. You know, we go to Cape Town or we go to Durban. Jahannesburg is still very much a transit city, even for international visitors. You use it to fly into our cambo and you fly out to wherever you're going. So our mission is really to get people to come back into the city, to fall in love with the city. And that's because the visitor economy, as we like to refer to it, because it looks at the entire value chain, puts money into local hands. It supports local traders, small businesses. Can it bring safety back to our streets. If the streets are full of people, the streets are safer, And.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Let's talk more about what you're doing to bring safety back into the streets, because I imagine a lot of people think of the CBD of Johannesburg and one of the first things that comes to mind is that it is no longer safe to be in that city, which which is not true of everywhere in Joanna'sburg CBD.
00:03:23
Speaker 2: I think, I think what you're saying, you know, it goes for every city, not just in South Africa, in the world, or it's in the entire world. You know, you've got to know what are the safe, saft safe places to be and where are the places that you need to be a little bit more vigilant. Johannesburg is definitely one of the places we know which areas are safe and which areas you shouldn't venture into. And as Josie by Jersey, you know, we've got five areas of work that we work in in the bottom and the first layer, you know, if you think of something like Measlow's hierarchy, the very first layer is safety, so security and environment. So we need to make the city safe and we need to clean up the city. That's where it all starts. And in terms of work, the talk, you know, safety is the first question that was addressed. And so in the CBD, security is very tightly managed, you know, and this walk is not above a casual you know, wander through the inner city. It's through very carefully planed routes where there are marshals, there are medics, JMPD, SAPs, private security companies very visible all along the route from the start to the finished and roads are managed. I mean just this morning when I got up to take this call from you saw the routes, the list of where all the JMPD, the SAPs, ex sextor are going to be posted along the routes to make sure that the route is calm and it's it's family safe. And we've also got very clear activation points with water and support from elikus and stuff in case anybody else listening to you talking to the lady about you know, having the right shoes on and stuff like that. So there are these points along the way to make sure that you're well, and there's also you know, just in terms of how you get into the city, I'm not sure if people know that you can take the hard train. You park at any hard train station across you one rand, you take the hard train, you get into Park Station. From Park Station, you crossover, you get onto a prossed train which takes you right to Joebigh Stadium. You get off the train, you walk through the tunnel and you're in the stadium. So we've thought about every aspect of it, but generally from a Josie in my Josie perspective, one of our key things is safety. And one of the key things that we're doing in terms of safety is that we've put over twenty two hundred solar street lights into the city to date to light up the city, because I mean crime hid in dark corners, so from a night time perspective, we've lit up the city. We also work with the Marishi Institute. So the Marishi Institute has established from two years ago what we call the Security Mastery Academy, and each year they're taken an average of one hundred and fifty young students into a three year course in security. And the first court of these already out on the streets. So when you walk through inter Citado, and if you noticed it when you were on the bus, you will see these marshals out there with Josie My Josie bibbs and jackets and stuff on, actually you know, patrolling the streets. And these young people that are on this course are not just people that are going on like a six week security course. They're on a three year intensive internationally benchmark security courts to make the city safer.
00:06:48
Speaker 1: I imagine Dawn there wish is for the tens of thousands who they're participating in the walk, the Talk the Sunday that they will fall in love with the city again and want to visit it and visited and visited and visited again and again and again beyond the Sunday.
00:07:05
Speaker 2: That's exactly the intention, and I think that's exactly why we got involved as Josey by Josie, and from my particular perspective and the workstream that I lead. You know, for me, these three routes that you can take through the city are you know, they turn it from a drive through city that you do with your windows closed and your doors locked, into a lived in story, so you get to explore the city. And the five kilometer, I always say, is like a first date with the inner city. You know, you walk through the short five kilometers on the east side what we call the East Village of the city, and you look at the history of that place, you look at the arts organizations and things that have sprung up over there, and you start to feel the change in the town. When you get onto the eight kilometer, you start to see more of the city's hustle, the traders, the markets are creative corners. You start to feel the feet on pavement and how money changes hands and the energy of the inner city. Albeit it's a Sunday and you won't see that like you see it in the week, but you'll start to feel that bars in the city. And the fifteen kilometer, I always say, is for the committed city lovers. Yeah, you're going to see the grift and the grits of the city, the graft, the repaired spaces, the lit up corridors, the people that are bringing Josie back block by block, and you're going to pass a whole lot of interesting spaces, places that you passed on the bus for example. So the fifteen is probably the one that's really going to get you to see interesting places across the city. You're going to see things like Constitution Hill, which is the only World Heritage site that we have in the city, and you're going to actually walk through Constitution Here, you're going to see the flame of democracy. You're going to walk over the Nelson Mandale Bridge and you're going to see what we've done to the store that bridge. You're going to come past the Market Theater, which is fifty years old this year and has been, as you know, the site of Struggle Theater and has played such a big role in changing how we see not just Johannesburg, but the entire country through the work that they put on there. So we're doing activations at a lot of these points. So at the Market Theater, for example, we will walk past and celebrate fifty years of the Market Theater. We'll walk across Mary Fitzgerald Square, and we are going to be celebrating jazz musicians, particularly jazz musicians that have passed away this year with Nicky's Oasis, we're going to be doing activations in main Street. We do something, but you're also having cape on you know, the whole open Streets movement. You have brief Street Sundays, and we have main Street Sundays, and that has really that was so successful, and we're treating the walk the talk almost like Street Sundays on steroids. It's not just one street, it's the entire city. But when you walk through Main Street you're going to get a taste of what Main Street Sundays feels like because we're activating it with activities that would have happened on a normal Main Street day. Motherning Arts Unmine, you could have passed Barbiicane. This is one of my favorite ones. Barbiecans used to be when it was built, the highest skyscraper in Johannesburg and Africa five stories high. Albeit and it's just been restored by a developer who bought it and fixed it up and it just to be known as the New York of Joeburg kind of thing. And we do in activations around the Barbicane. It's an Art Deco building. We're going to bring in cars and people in period costumes so as you walk past the Barbicane you can get a feel for what it was like in the heyday and you know, have photo opportunity. Were doing the same thing with the Rand Club, which is an edwardume book. We're working with the James Horme Museum of Transport and they are bringing out the Mayor's car, the Rolls Royce from nineteen thirty or so. Let's get repassed outside the land Club again with people in period costumes so you can have you know, pictures taken with that. So the entire route has been lit up with these different activations and also our corporates are also doing activations all along the route.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: The otherwise I'm going to spoil thans going to be a wonderful experience for all accounts. Thank you very much. Don Robertson is the visitor and creative economy catalyst at Josie My Josie Do go to the website Josiemijosei dot com to learn more about the work that they do, and of course go to ProMedia plus dot com for all the details about the seven or two Josie My Josie Walk the Talk, which is taking place this Sunday. You're listening to Cape talking seven oh two. It's just after five
