Water for the Future (WFTF) built our first Eco Tree Seat in May 2019 as part of the JDA’s Our City Our block campaign. The co-designed intervention aims to pilot functional sculpture that helps the city adapt to climate change. Increased thunderstorms put the existing failing infrastructure under pressure, and this intervention reroute the water to grow a new tree as a soak away system before it goes into the drainage system. It aims to incentivised co-maintenance of urban infrastructure to adapt to climate change.

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The Johannesburg Climate Change Adaptation Plan have made reference to this intervention as an example how society can be incentivised to adapt. The Artist, who lead the process of this intervention have published about it in the MIT Leonardo publication 2021 titled The theory of non-theory, which can be read here.

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Treasure Hunt
The Droplet Treasure Hunt that WFTF co-designed with valley partners and academics. The pilot treasure hunt was done by Timbuktu in December 2019. ‘The route was to the beginning of snake road. It was after the incident with Dlala Nje being held up at gun point, so we didn’t go all the way up snake road. We chilled on top of the big rock and had conversations about the flow of the water, the rocks and what pollution does to all of that. What could be our role in bring the change to our environment and within our community.’ From Lungi, Timbuktu

Environmental awareness is key to the treasure hunt. The children learn how water flows through the Valley, which sweep trash along when it rains and causes flash floods. They have started taking care of the tree in thre Eco Tree seat on Viljoen street which is growing at a healthy pace. They pick up trash there because they know the growth of the tree will be better if they water it and keep it clean. This funding enabled us to design and test the Droplet Treasure Hunt with about 10 children. We will proceed with the intervention in relation to our other activations we do in the valley.