Wire art’s South African origins sprung from need remedied by clever resourcefulness. Unable to access commercially made toys, South African children have long created playthings out of scrap – coat hanger wire, tin cans, and bottle caps, creations that evolved into remarkably elaborate playthings that double as whimsical folk art. Adults began to recognize the marketability of these wire toys and began making their own creations and selling them to visitors. Today, wire craft is a thriving African art in which artisans, called “wiremasters”, are able to support their families in the brisk trade of their colorful, fanciful creations.

Founded by artists in 2000, Streetwires identified wire and bead craft as a trainable, marketable skill that could be taught to the unemployed, providing both capacity building and economic benefits to the trainees whose incomes would grow as their skill, speed, and creativity increased. Streetwires recognized that wire art had previously been promoted solely as a localized tourist business. Streetwires’ founders opted to “think big” and scaled the business for volume by bringing on a team of artists and artists-in-training, marketing their creations internationally and producing on a grander scale with consistent standards of quality control. From this larger business model sprung the potential for even more previously destitute people to benefit from sustainable, meaningful long term employment. The organization set about posting job flyers at bus stops in downtown Cape Town: Will train, no experience necessary.

Fast forward to 2008: The retail store (which is truly a gallery of artwork) is a testament to the incredible range of the team’s creativity: the room is wildly colorful jewelry/curio store, home fixture shop and menagerie all rolled up into one. Our first pass through the gallery was a tantalizing tour – I knew we weren’t leaving that building without dropping some serious rand. The booming bass and disc jockey chatter from a popular radio station grows louder as we approach the lively workshop, a bright space humming with activity – tables with beading teams of 4 to 6 people, chatting and laughing while hands swiftly carry on with threading beads onto wire, sculpting, shaping, weaving.

When a beading team accepts a project, they receive an sample of the object they are to produce so that employees understand the exact size, shape and color of the deliverable, along with the calculations of the entire costing of the project so they can see how much money they will make when they complete the task – straight-forward information about the expectations and the income related to each project.

Some thrilling facts: Streetwires has provided the skills, training, support, and raw materials necessary to enable more than 100 formerly unemployed men and women to learn a marketable creative skill – many of whom have “graduated” into their own wire art businesses, making room for new trainees who can leave the ranks of the unemployed to provide for themselves and their families. Streetwires’ business is booming: a growing number of local and international retailers are selling their wares and with the excitement of the impending 2010 World Cup in South Africa, there are lots of projects on the schedule and plenty of optimism about future business.

As for our team, we departed Streetwires with bags of bright stars, sharks, cars, rhinos, soccer balls, picture frames, earrings, elephants and the coolest fully-functioning AM-FM radio (with bottle caps for knobs) to have winged its way back to North America in a suitcase.