South AfRICAN ScRAtch - Local is LekkEr

Why We need Help from Graphic DeSignERs, Photographers, and others with a good EYE

We and hundreds of other organisations and schools use Scratch to teach computer programming fundamentals. It's free software from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, and millions of projects have been created and shared by learners. It's creative, fun, and they've done a great job of providing a diverse set of characters. But as you can see from the images below, some of characters and backgrounds don't make it easy for South African learners to tell their own stories.

We want a version of Scratch where learners throughout SA can tell their stories and make their games with images and ideas that they know - Moses Mabhida as a background, a Durban taxi as a character, a green-screened picture of themselves, a picture of their school.

We will be hosting a Heritage Day competition where learners use Scratch and images that we've collected to to make a Heritage project. It could be urban contemporary heritage, rural traditional heritage, or a mix - however they define and want to express it.

This is where we need your help. We've identified some images through collaboration with the Phansi Museum. We've made the characters you see below after a lot of undoing and puzzling about quick masks. We need help processing more of these images as well as finding or capturing new images to round out the library of possibilities. We're keen to connect to any of the fantastic Instagram artists out there or use images that you take.

We'd also like to have local music, if that's your thing, but the main focus is the images. If interested, please contact us and we can talk details.

Thanks for your interest!