Farewell to a dream catcher...

Our wish for Princess Vlei is that if anyone has bad intentions, bad dreams and bad wishes for this area that those dream catchers will catch those and only let through the good vibes.” - Ayesha Price, 2012

Ayesha Price was one of the leading inspirational voices in the struggle to save Princess Vlei, and the journey of renewal since then. Her death at the age of 49 has been a great shock to all who worked with her.
Ayesha’s first involvement with the Princess Vlei Forum was her work on the Arts Alive event at Princess Vlei in 2012, when various artists and principals of community arts centres came together to create giant dream catchers with their learners to hang at Princess Vlei.
Ayesha was then Principal of the Children’s Art Centre in Zonnebloem, and one of the key inspirations behind the idea. She continued with this talented team of artists and others to initiate in many artistic interventions in and around Princess Vlei.
These included our first Flight of Dreams Parade, a night time parade in 2013. The energy sparked by this event has inspired the 9 annual parades and processions since then, held every year save for 2020 when it was cancelled due to Covid restrictions.
Ayesha had a wonderful way with children, and inspired many with her guidance. She ran workshops to create masks and puppets for the Princess Vlei Parades, and helped learners to connect with nature through observational drawing at Princess Vlei.

    She also served on the Imagine Princess Vlei committee, which was instrumental in collating the community vision for Princess Vlei, which has served a blue print for the City of Cape Town’s improvements to the area since the plans to build the mall were scrapped. She provided the voice over and commentary to a video we created to explain the Imagine Princess Vlei project.
    In 2013, she created a seven panel  multimedia installation to embody the spirit of Princess Vlei, which she described as “ a wetland in an urban area and a specific site of trauma: haunted by myths, riled with urban legends, inextricably linked to the displacement of people and currently, under real threat of destruction by commercial development.” http://www.princessvlei.org/articles/a-mesmerising-installation
   After leaving the Children’s Art Centre, Ayesha worked as a teacher, volunteer, art facilitator and curator at the District Six Museum. With a personal connection to the trauma of forced removals from District Six through her mother, Ayesha was passionate about using art to help heal the trauma of the past. She facilitated a number of public art projects, working with young and old. One such project was the Flower of Maryam on the wall of the District Six Clinic.  Ayesha described the flower as “a powerful maternal image that speaks to shared indigenous knowledge and a sense of belonging to a community even through migration and displacement.” (Ayesha Price 2019)
Since 2019 she has been teaching undergraduate projects in sculpture at Michaelis School of Fine Art.
In the video below, Ayesha narrates the story of Imagine Princess Vlei