Overview
The Langa ’Young Blood’ Printmaking Workshops are bi-weekly Arts Workshops that focus on printmaking and drawing. The workshops are held at Velile Soha’s studio in Langa on Saturdays. Each learner is encouraged to draw, imagine, observe, and create work that tells their own story. The members of the group are from Lower Crossroads, Langa and Nyanga. Workshops cover methods and techniques of lino, dry point etching, woodcut, mono print and collagraph printing. The workshops are organized and taught by Abongile Ngqunge, Velile Soha and Ledelle Moe
Nicknamed ’Young Blood’ by the participants, this young collective stemmed out of the 2017 Thupelo workshops held at Nyanga Arts Development Center. Velile Soha and Ledelle Moe began the group with two pilot workshops and a group of young learners from the area. This evolved into an ongoing and consistent biweekly Arts workshop at the center. Abongile Ngqunge, Nomusa Mtshali and Charles Palm assisted in the classes bringing their unique creative insights as artists to the workshops.
In October 2017 the students exhibited with the Black Ink collective at GUS Gallery in Stellenbosch. This venture allowed for a creative platform for all students to meet and for the older members of our groups to explain the deep history behind the traditions of visual storytelling. The following year, in 2018, Stellenbosch's Black ink collective and the ‘Young Blood’ Nyanga group exhibited together again at the The Spot Gallery in Woodstock.
In 2019 the workshops moved from the Nyanga Arts Center to Velile Soha’s studio in Langa. Abongile Ngqunge, Ledelle Moe and Velile Soha continue to run the bi-weekly workshops which has expanded to include new learners. The group exhibited a selection of their works at Zeitz MoCAA in October 2020. Since then the group’s work has been exhibited annually at ABC Gallery in Cape Town in 2021, Brutal Gallery in 2022 and Cape Town Arts Residency in 2023. The workshops and programming will continue this year and will include an exhibition of the groups work in Langa and at Roam Gallery in Massachusetts, USA.
Vision & Mission
The children in this group are given creative freedom to draw, imagine and give expression to any narrative/story that is on their mind. They are guided through various mediums of printmaking and are provided with reference material in the form of local newspaper images, books and magazines. This ‘holding space’ and creative workshop is aimed at providing a space for sustained and ongoing creative practice. The youngest children (7 and 8 years old) are encouraged to play and experiment. The teenagers focus more on technical skill building. Working alongside mature artists ( Abongile, Ledelle and Velile) allows for instruction by example.
We hope that each participant can begin to develop a portfolio of work that will help them to apply for residencies, jobs and tertiary studies in the future. The workshops have culminated in various exhibitions. These exhibitions have been open to the public and allowed for the work to be shared and celebrated.
