Taking place from 25 to 30 November 2025, the 11th Season of The Centre For Less Good Idea, is billed A Collective Navigation

Curated by Impresario for the Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga, and supported by The Centre’s core team, Season 11 focuses on work made by and in collaboration with Johannesburg’s many artists, theatre makers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and thinkers, as well as a host of invited international artists. 

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

I was there in 2023. Joined the parade on one of the shortest streets, in Maboneng, where the festivities started in the afternoon. The performers, who included dancers and singers, and who looked like, they were mainly drawn from the surrounding communities made up of mainly people from a number of hostels dotted around Maboneng, were dressed up in colourful costumes and shiny dance shoes that suggested we were about to witness great action. We the onlookers were initially a small but eager group. Full of curiosity and anticipation.

But soon the numbers swelled as the group started their stunning choreography and smooth singing that seemed to be coming from their hearts. The melodies of the songs were like a heavenly whisper of happiness. The audience of onlookers however grew fast to a crowd. So fast that by the time the parade took to the street, marching majestically and with studied elegance towards Main Street, a street away, moving in the direction of Maboneng, a large crowd was part of the festivities that culminated at Arts on Main nearby. That is where more and formal festivities coalesced into a huge festival that took places in the various spaces of Centre for Less Good idea, housed in the Arts on Main Precinct.

 It was festival time in Maboneng. That was Season 10, a series of events well curated by The Centre For Less Good Idea. In fact, this series of festivals, which take place in a place of town that is accessible to surrounding communities, as well as attracting those from the richer suburbs of Johannesburg, has increasingly become a signature festival in Johannesburg Inner city.

It is a special festival in that it is indeed inclusive with regards to the participating artists that include highly trained professionals who ahead of the festival, get to work hard, rehearsing their productions, experimenting and trying new ideas that they try out. But on the other hand, the festival is also an inclusive one in that semi professional artists, some drawn from the surrounding communities that live in this part of time, such as the group I saw last year, get an opportunity to be part of this festival, working with professionals to polish their work, that gets to be enjoyed by festival goers in their much improved state.

The festival is also attracts diverse audiences, comprising Maboneng residents and surrounds, those from the suburbs and also travellers from abroad. It is a spectacle of entertainment, cutting edge experimental work in the areas of music, theatre, dance, visual art and installations. It is a colourful burst of artistic energy and exuberance for both participating artists and the audience.

Now to those who have been following this festival, they have a reason to be excited once more. This is because the festival is back again this year, and from a cursory glance of its programme, it appears that there is more to expect this year.  The festival mix is quite well thought out, and it is the kind of artistic offering that one wishes gets the attention of some of the delegates of the G20 Summit who may decide to stay a while after the Summit, which takes place from 22 November to 23 November, 2025.

That is to say, this is a good space and festival for the world leaders to consider giving their attention to once they are done at NASREC nearby, shaping the future of the global economy, finding challenges to contemporary issues affecting the world, as well as in many ways determining the human trajectory in the coming years.

After all, the answer to some of the pressing is as they go back to their countries. sues affecting the world, may be lying within the ambit of the humanities, and the Season 11 of The Centre for Less Good Idea, which coincides with the G20 Summit, a 15 minute drive away, might as well be the starting point to use it to reflect on the hard bargaining, the decisions reached, and perhaps ponder the best ways of implementing the decisions going forward. The programming for this year is quite impressive in any case.

Taking place from 25 to 30 November 2025, this 11th Season of The Centre For Less Good Idea, is billed as Site, Light, Action: A Series of Site-specific Activation.

Curated by Impresario for the Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga, and supported by The Centre’s core team, Season 11 focuses on work made by and in collaboration with Johannesburg’s many artists, theatremakers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and thinkers, as well as a host of invited international artists. 

For Muyanga, whose practice straddles the spheres of performance and scholarship, and whose compositional style is grounded in the South African choral tradition, a key interest is that of the collective voice as a vector that shapes society. Specifically, it’s the act of collective seeing and shaping that runs through Season 11.

Activating Fox Street with Light, Music, Performance and pop-up installations

Alongside a multifaceted offering of staged theatre, experimental visual art and dance, public conversations and more, is a programme of public activations in and around Arts on Main.

Titled Site, Light, Action | Fox Street Activations, this is a series of free short-form experiments along Fox Street and inside Arts on Main, curated by Vienna-based South African artist Marcus Neustetter.

Designed to be experienced as a programme of experimental engagements with the city, Site, Light, Action encourages audiences to explore the Arts on Main building and the surrounding streets in a free-spirited and incidental way.

Taking place each evening from 19h00 the programme is free to the public, and is designed to activate the city and its audiences. Those commuting along Fox Street, for example, can stop and witness a short theatrical intervention, musical performance, or experimental light show.

A few of the key activations for Site, Light, Action include a pop-up coffee-shop performance with pianist Jill Richards, shop-front shadow dances with artists including Thulisile Binda and Smangaliso Ngwenya, and Sello Pesa and Phala Ookeditse Phala’s Ngoana oa Nokaea Kubetu, a new iteration of their Nokeng yaKubetu series, performed in the Arts on Main Atrium.

Neustetter, having lived in Maboneng for more than a decade, has a long history of working in the city, with a strong focus on light projection and social engagement. Additionally, through the Trinity Session, a contemporary art production company he co-founded in 2000, Neustetter has worked on various public installations and site-specific projects, all of which are defined by their relationships and exchanges with the city of Johannesburg.

“These small experimental moments embrace the unknown or hidden, seeking connections and stories that might reveal themselves through artistic languages. Framed by temporary sets and focused by responsive mobile light, these moments function as small public studios of attempted sense-making,” says Neustetter.

Neustetter, in collaboration with photographer ZivanaiMatangi also presents a new series of light drawings during the Season, on exhibition in the Arts on Main Atrium.

The full programme for Season 11 is available at www.lessgoodidea.com