The Centre for the Less Good Idea

The Centre for the Less Good Idea The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg.

The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg. Founded by William Kentridge the Centre aims find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects.

📣 THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA x SAHA CREATIVE EXCHANGE 📣 ✨We are thrilled to announce the selection of Istanbul-ba...
22/06/2026

📣 THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA x SAHA CREATIVE EXCHANGE 📣

✨We are thrilled to announce the selection of Istanbul-based artists İrem Nalça and Melih Kıraç, who will be travelling to Johannesburg, South Africa, in July for their creative exchange at The Centre.

📌From 6 to 31 July, The Centre for the Less Good Idea partners with SAHA for a creative exchange taking place, combining structured workshop periods with independent research time.

📌While in Johannesburg, Nalça and Kıraç will work with an interdisciplinary group of performers, musicians, and artists, engaging in a collaborative process that moves between research, experimentation, and collective composition. This exchange period also falls within The Centre’s ideation workshops for COLLATION 5, the latest in a series of short, focused programmes of performance-based events around a central theme, method or point of interest.

🎭These generative workshops will allow the two artists participating in the exchange to experience The Centre’s collective way of working in relation to their own practices.

🗣️İrem Nalça is an Istanbul-based artist with a background in sculpture. Nalça works with various techniques, including animation, shadow play, and spatial interactions. Consistent in her practice is a search for forms of making in which meaning emerges through encounter rather than declaration. She is interested in how artistic practice can remain open, responsive, and collective.

🗣️Melih Kıraç is an Istanbul-based artist, choreographer and researcher. His choreographic research centres around collaborative processes and modes of knowing and experiencing the world, through archive, and the absence of places and bodies with improvisational structures.

18/06/2026

“We see the Johannesburg CBD as being emblematic of the city of the Global South in the 21st century, and we are interested in making art through it, with it.” 🌃

If you haven’t seen our Unexpected City programme from our 11th Season, watch all of the short-form performances on our website 🔗

Throwback to ‘Notebook of a Long Day’s Journey into a Hillbrow Night’ (2025) 🎬A production by the Windybrow Arts Centre,...
16/06/2026

Throwback to ‘Notebook of a Long Day’s Journey into a Hillbrow Night’ (2025) 🎬

A production by the Windybrow Arts Centre, in collaboration with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, this performance emerges from a central question: What would Aimé Césaire’s classic anticolonial long poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land sound like if it were written today, by teenagers living in Hillbrow?

Watch the full performance on our website, or YouTube channel.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

15/06/2026

“The power of staying with a single image.”

Thank you for joining us last Friday for The Open Moment | Thinking In Explosion of a Memory with Camille de Bonhome and our cohort of Johannesburg-based artists✨

If you missed it, keep an eye on our website in the coming weeks for the full Open Moment 🎬

📣Tomorrow night, The Centre presents The Open Moment | Thinking In Explosion of a Memory 📣📌This Open Moment follows a fi...
11/06/2026

📣Tomorrow night, The Centre presents The Open Moment | Thinking In Explosion of a Memory 📣

📌This Open Moment follows a five-day mentorship by Belgian artist and theatremaker Camille de Bonhome, which has seen her exploring extracts of the 1984 play ‘Explosion of a memory’ by Heiner Müller.

📌De Bonhome has been working with Johannesburg-based artists to further test the play through repetition, exhaustion, and multiple languages to question, among other things, the relationship between violence and its representation, how we build images and how we change the meaning of an image, and how meaning is changed through the body.

🎭Join us tomorrow as De Bonhome and the artists share some of the discoveries and experiments from the week.

🗣️The Thinking In Explosion of a Memory participants are: Campbell Meas, Fana Tshabalala, Itumeleng Moeketsi, Jaden Mosadi, Thabang Chauke, Katlego Jack Moloi, Mlungisi Tshobeka, Nolwazi Mahlangu, Nomsa Myth Tavarwisa, Nomsa Tina Mavuka & Slindile Mthembu

DATE | FRIDAY 12 JUNE 2026
TIME | 19H00
VENUE | THE CENTRE SPACE, THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, ARTS ON MAIN, 264 FOX STREET, MABONENG
DURATION | 60-90 MINUTES
TICKETS | R150
BOOKINGS | www.lessgoodidea.com/bookings 🔗

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

📣NEXT FRIDAY: THE OPEN MOMENT | THINKING IN EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY📣On Friday 12 June, The Centre for the Less Good Idea p...
05/06/2026

📣NEXT FRIDAY: THE OPEN MOMENT | THINKING IN EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY📣

On Friday 12 June, The Centre for the Less Good Idea presents The Open Moment | Thinking In Explosion of a Memory.

📌This Open Moment follows a five-day mentorship by Belgian artist and theatremaker Camille de Bonhome that will see her exploring the 1984 play Explosion of a memory by Heiner Müller.

📌De Bonhome will work with Johannesburg-based artists to further test the play through repetition, exhaustion, and multiple languages to question, among other things, the relationship between violence and its representation, how we build images and how we change the meaning of an image, and how meaning is changed through the body. This mentorship is as much about De Bonhome extending her research through her engagement with the participants as it is about the participants growing through their encounter with her process.

🗣️The Thinking In Explosion of a Memory participants are: Campbell Meas, Fana Tshabalala, Itumeleng Moeketsi, Jaden Mosadi, Thabang Chauke, Katlego Jack Moloi, Mlungisi Tshobeka, Nolwazi Mahlangu, Nomsa Myth Tavarwisa, Nomsa Tina Mavuka, Sami Maseko & Slindile Mthembu

Thinking In Explosion of a Memory is made possible with the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Service Général de la Création Artistique – Direction du Théâtre

DATE | FRIDAY 12 JUNE 2026
TIME | 19H00
VENUE | THE CENTRE SPACE, THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, ARTS ON MAIN, 264 FOX STREET, MABONENG
DURATION | 60-90 MINUTES
TICKETS | R150
BOOKINGS | www.lessgoodidea.com/bookings 🔗

04/06/2026

📣 TÊTE-À-TÊTE | ARTISTS TO PRODUCERS 📣

Our recent Thinking In Photography workshop and Open Moment also served as an opportunity for artists from our TÊTE-À-TÊTE | Artists to Producers programme to share extracts of their projects, receive feedback from photographers, and come away with professional photographic documentation of their work.

Featuring work by Zara Julius, Campbell Meas, Bash Hops, and Lulu Mlangeni

📣 WORKSHOP: LIVING AUTOCHROMES | ALBERT KAHN MUSEUM, PARIS 📣To mark the closing of the exhibition ‘Bénin aller-retour. R...
03/06/2026

📣 WORKSHOP: LIVING AUTOCHROMES | ALBERT KAHN MUSEUM, PARIS 📣

To mark the closing of the exhibition ‘Bénin aller-retour. Regards sur le Dahomey de 1930’ the Albert-Kahn departmental museum invites you to an afternoon of creative workshops led by Bronwyn Lace and Marcus Neustetter, associate artists of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

The ‘Living Autochromes’ workshop is inspired by the Archives of the Planet and the artists’ travels to Benin, proposing a dialogue between archives, memory and contemporary imagination.

Through collage, reframing, and collective creation practices in the museum and its garden, participants explore the archive as a living, constantly reinterpreted material. The workshop thus invites a fresh perspective on narratives of the past and the connections they forge with the present.

📅 Date: Sunday, June 14
🕓 Time: 2 PM
⏳ Duration: 3 hours
📍 Location: The Musée Départemental Albert-Kahn, Auditorium
🎟️ Tickets: link in bio

📣 LOOKING BACK | SEASON 2 OF VALDEMARS SLOT 📣📌The Centre for the Less Good Idea was recently in Denmark for a creative r...
02/06/2026

📣 LOOKING BACK | SEASON 2 OF VALDEMARS SLOT 📣

📌The Centre for the Less Good Idea was recently in Denmark for a creative residency culminating in the launch of Season 2 of the Valdemars Slot Art Foundation.

🗣️Led by Director Bronwyn Lace and Impresario Neo Muyanga, the event brought together South African artists Anathi Conjwa, Thulani Chauke, and Micca Manganye in collaboration with Denmark-based artists Andreas Borregaard, Magnus Christoffersen and Amelia Coleman, Polina Fradkina, and Halina Wigocka Wamberg.

🎭The evolving programme of installation and live performance develops in close dialogue with the historic site and its rich musical archives. Collaborative films inhabited the palace attic and flooded the Corn Barn’s floor, while interactive shadow theatre transformed the old Carriage Barn.

Photographer | Davy Denke (, ) 📷

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264 Fox Street
Johannesburg
2001

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