The artistic world while full of exceptional individuals thrives when community comes into play. This installment of articles from our collaborator the Culture Review explores this notion and just how important it is to have support and community within artistic ecosystems to ensure sustainability.

Blackness as a state of being exists relatively on the periphery. It is a form that is almost always expected to relent and equivocate even when its comforts are disrupted.

In the twilight a dog's wail can be heard in the distance, there is no real silence in the township, in between the stolen moments of serenity there are eerie sounds to remind the people of how low they fall on the food chain; a crying baby; a woman scolding her children for this thing or the other; a helicopter flying above the small houses looking for a stolen car; a terrifying gunshot in the distance.

Black of skin and relegated to so-called dusty streets: these are the people for which Makhafula Vilakazi has written and spoken. The inhibitors of townships streets: walking long miles while merciless rains seep into the holes on the shoes barely covering their feet.

Today we find ourselves imprisoned by the walls we built with our own hands. In the confines of fragile abodes we gather the ancestors who’ve endured the perils of this wretched earth. With our songs and prayers. We beat shudders and shocks against the four walls that are pieced together by bricks, mortar, sweat and tears.