Reweaving in the Valley of Grace
Located about 1.5 hours inland from Cape Town, the Valley of Grace encompasses the towns of Genadendal and Greyton, nestled in the southern slopes of the Riviersonderend Mountains. Originally home to the semi-nomadic Indigenous Chainoquas (a Khoi group) and Bushmen, these communities engaged in trade with Europeans from 1657. In 1742, a Moravian mission was established in Genadendal, holding severals “firsts” in the country, including 1st European Christian mission, the 1st industrial town (making knives), the 1st teachers’ training college and the 1st kindergarten.
Beginnings in Greyton
The project began with two conversations: one with Michelle de Bruyn from Wild Restoration about the need to bring more creativity into the biodiversity sector, and another with artist Marti Lund on how art can explore the meaning of extinction in a global hotspot of biodiversity loss. The Cape Floristic Region, home to Cape Town and the Valley of Grace, has the world’s second-highest rate of plant extinction.
Marti brought over a decade of mural-making experience, and Wild Restoration provided seed funding for creative experimentation. Together, we co-created a mural on Greyton’s main road, celebrating local biodiversity. The artwork featured the surrounding mountains which host leopards (captured on a camera trap), the highly localised Pelargonium greytonense, and children removing invasive alien plants — based on photographs taken during the day’s activities.
Learners from local eco-clubs joined for a biodiversity walk into the mountains, invasive plant clearing, and a collage session to reflect on what they had learned. Drawing on these inputs, Marti designed the mural and completed it over three days in May 2025. More details can be found here.
Celebrating living heritage in Genadenal
During the Greyton process, a resident from neighbouring Genadendal invited us to bring a similar initiative to their community. This provided the perfect opportunity to more deeply explore bioculture and Stories of Place. In partnership with the Genadendal Mission Museum (GMM), we set out to co-create a mural celebrating the region’s biodiversity, culture, and Indigenous Knowledge .
A wall one block from Genadendal’s historic centre became the canvas. Its owner, inspired by the Greyton mural, had hoped to meet the artist who made it to do something similar on his wall.
On activation day, Genadendal residents Keagan Malgas and Bushman healer Uri Vilander guided learners from eco-clubs in both towns on a walk focused on indigenous food and medicinal plants. Back at the Mission Museum, over honeybush ice tea grown in its gardens, learners drew bouquets of local healing plants, which were later exhibited during the Heritage Day celebration.
The mural design had been developed over the preceding week, informed by conversations with community members, archival research, and missionary diaries (1792–1794). The imagery wove together myth, memory, and local histories to distil a living Story of Place.
At its heart was the honeyguide bird, drawn from diary entries recounting how a Khoi guide once communicated with a honeyguide and followed it to a hive. Such human-bird relationships are widely recorded in Southern Africa, carrying rich mythology about sharing nature’s abundance, or suffering for being greedy.
Other elements included the Khoi journeyman, a figure weaving through fables that honour workers, landmarks, biodiversity, and the bio-economy of honeybush, a yellow-flowered plant now gaining global recognition. Furthermore, a tribute was made to the Genadendal Heath (Erica vallis-gratiae), a highly endangered species found only in the surrounding mountains.
Painted over three days in mid-September 2025, the mural was unveiled during the GMM’s National Heritage Day celebrations. The day featured a film screening, a vegetarian potjiekos competition, indigenous plant displays, and sales, marking the first time Indigenous Knowledge was celebrated so publicly in town.
Building on this momentum, we are now exploring further collaborations with the GMM and Indigenous knowledge holders to deepen creative processes around bioculture and Stories of Place.
