Crossroads Cleanups & Workshops

This photo portfolio captures the heart of our journey: two community cleanup and art-building sessions held in the lead-up to AfrikaBurn 2025. What began as waste collection quickly transformed into creative action. Alongside volunteers and local changemakers, we gathered discarded materials and began crafting elements of the Cosmic Jelly right on site. Many of the pieces made during these sessions—especially the jellyfish’s flowing tentacles—were built from reclaimed plastics collected that day, giving new life to what would have otherwise polluted our waterways. These images reflect the energy, effort, and collective spirit that shaped the Cosmic Jelly from the ground up.

The Process

Each session began with a safety briefing, as participants would be working with box cutters and glue guns. Once briefed, the group got to work collecting and sorting plastic bottles—mostly 2-liter cooldrink bottles—gathered from the cleanup. These were then washed, dried, and primed for transformation. Before the crafting began, the design process was explained and illustrated so everyone understood how their efforts would contribute to the final jellyfish installation. From there, the bottles were cut, shaped, and assembled to form the flowing tentacles of the Cosmic Jelly. Some were connected with wire, others fused with heat or glued into place, showcasing how waste could be reimagined as something beautiful, functional, and full of meaning.

Blair Impson

“Coming together for a common cause is a powerful experience. It is an opportunity to learn from each other and see things from different perspectives in order to achieve practical and effective solutions that are born from collaboration of ideas. These ideas carry in them the voices of many and therefore will echo larger vibrations in time then those whispered in solitude - Together we are one”

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Jelly at night

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Initial Production phase