Waste Not, Want Not

Shade opened in Brixton in 2019 as a community project space and a hybrid arts intervention. Shade Director and visual artist, Tamzyn Botha (Limb) has since shown three exhibitions, numerous workshops, hosts a weekly art programme for 30+ youth from around the area and co-curated the Brixton Light Festival. In September 2020, Shade opened Waste Not Want Not, a multi-disciplinary project that acts as an intersection between waste reclaimers, artists and youth to align in a way that is enduring and self-sustaining. It empowers reclaimers to source and be alert to the possibilities and potential of materials. The project was established as an artist-in-residence where artists were given access to the waste materials library curated by Shade and sourced by reclaimers. The library is archived according to the materials source, compound make-up and the recycling value per kg. Since its inception, over 200 reclaimers have been to Shade - either in a capacity to sell their materials or for the events setup for them to privately view the artist's ‘waste works’. The project later results in an exhibition, one at Shade and one fitted to a dumper truck taken to communities of peripheral purveyors that made this project possible - the waste reclaimers. The final outcome is a waste zine in Sesotho and isiZulu which will be distributed from the roaming truck. Waste will forever be relevant giving this project a sense of life-long iterations.