Thrive Student Living is operated by Growthpoint Student Accommodation, part of JSE-listed Real Estate Investment Trust Growthpoint Properties’ portfolio. As such it benefits from Growthpoint’s award-winning green building initiatives and ongoing mission to create healthy, sustainable environments, with a socially conscious mandate.
“We believe in lifting as we rise and endeavour to partner with members of the university community where possible,” says Amogelang Mocumi, fund manager of Growthpoint Student Accommodation. “The decision to partner with Thobile was easy given that she is a Wits student and her work resonates with what Thrive Student Living stands for.”
Thrive offers tailor-made campus communities, which include study areas, games rooms, gyms, and backup power and water. Its Student Life programme offers around-the-clock support for students, encompassing everything from academic performance to physical health and mental wellness. It is this unique approach that gives parents and bursary providers peace of mind, knowing students are in a fully supportive environment. Ukuzilanda Ukuzilandela Nokuzelapha is a visual extension of this spirit, says Amogelang.
“Art is a language, a universal form of expression,” he says. “When students are sitting in the courtyard underneath this wonderful mural, and they then read the plaque detailing its inspiration, they find new meaning in it and derive their own meaning from it.”
Commissioning Mavuso proved the perfect fit: she is young, female, vibrant, upcoming, locally based in Joburg, multidisciplinary — she works in paint, photography, text, sound, and printmaking — and is a student too, with her own complicated history. Born and bred in the city, she has long wrestled with her Ndebele culture. She started writing poetry in earnest at the age of 11 to process her emotions around troubles at home, culminating in the publication of her award-wining anthology Songs Broken Women Sing in 2019.
“This latest artwork calls for its viewers to remember who they are no matter how far away they may feel or be from their ancestral lands and events,” she says. “Their work is to celebrate their culture, and to keep it alive. Culture, like art, is a living thing.”
For more information about Arteria Parktown and its amenities, visit the Thrive Student Living website.
This article was sponsored by Growthpoint Properties.