Cityscapes, an urban think tank and multi-nodal publisher, has developed a prototype of The Shift Game Set which comprises Time Warp, a board game interface, and The Urban Canvas Deck, a set of cards. The goal of the game is to share stories and strategies about what shapes the places where the players live or work, and identify what areas need collective attention for change.

As one of the components of the Shift Game Set, the Urban Canvas Deck is used to expand vocabulary and prompt the conversation around urban development and community engagement. Each card corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, and then draws further connections by indicating which of the other cards/letters are associated.

Let’s draw a hand of cards.

To play through the A4’s database, we examine the hand we’ve been dealt. The Urban Canvas Deck can be played in many different ways. For this path, we’ll use just the cards, without the board game, following how they connect and where they lead us.

I’ve decided to use the card with the letter (J) for Jugaad as my first play.

Jugaad reminds me of the slang verb ‘to MacGyver’ – a reference to protagonist of the U.S. television series, MacGyver (1985-92), known for improvising solutions to practical problems with limited tools and materials.

When encountering this concept, one of the first artists who comes to mind is Moshekwa Langa, who utilises a playful improvisation of material: studio detritus and found objects that are intuitively collaged. His works emerge from a process of experimentation rather than rigid planning, just as jugaad often involves finding unconventional solutions.

In the Urban Canvas Deck, the (J) for Jugaad card displays the letter (I) on it, signalling that it is connected to another card, (I) for Informality. Each card is designed around specific urban topics, but also creates a network of terms that allows the player to see these elements as puzzle pieces or coordinates rather than standalone definitions.

We draw the (I) card from our hand, and jump from Langa’s jugaad to Shilpa Gupta’s ongoing 100 Hand-drawn Maps project (2008–), where in 100 people were invited to draw the shape of a country in one uninterrupted line from memory. The notebook containing the drawings was then displayed under an electric fan, blowing the pages back and forth as it turned.

Let’s examine the (I) card to understand the definition of informality.

Through these misshapen maps, Gupta embraces the impressions of place that exist outside of official records: “This brings forth a certain disparity between private and public memory, between the officially sanctioned cartography and the informal mental image one holds of their country.”

Re-examining the (I) for Informality card, we can see that it is connect to two cards: (J) and (D). As we have already played the (J) card, we now move forward to (D) for Density.

Here, Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s research residency on the Ponte City book resonates as an example of Density.

For their project at A4, the artists re-engineered and modulated their fifteen-year engagement with the iconic 54-storey brutalist apartment building in Johannesburg into four interactive book "book towers".

Filled with materials – prototype books, sketches and ephemera – collected during research on Ponte City, the project engages with density through the amount of information they hold, as well as through their real-world counterpart.

On the (D) for Density card, we have more connection options than just back and forward. We have the opportunity to think about (B) for Biodiversity, (A) for Affordable housing, or (Z) for Zoning.

Let’s play (B) to highlight that where there is abundance, there is also variety.

Cynthia Fan and Hayden Malan’s collaborative enquiry, Hypothesis 1 & 2, looks into the relationship between botanical life, non-human autonomy, and art centres, following the guiding question: “What do plants really want?” Placing plant compositions in A4’s Goods corridor and outside the building on the sidewalk, Fan and Malan watched them evolve over the course of the project by making roots, decaying, or drying.

From the onset, some of the plants may have been registered as ‘dead’, no longer fitting into display conventions of colourful and verdant compositions that we associate with decoration. Yet, this indicates that the plants have reached their seeding stage – at their highest potential to create new life – and understandings of ‘life’ and ‘death’ become layered.

After (B) for Biodiversity, we can follow the card’s connection to the (H) for Health card, thinking about another intervention in the Goods corridor that bridges both of these cards: the Amakaba collective’s vision of healing through natural rhythms and the forces of the Amazon forest.

For the installation, titled Lunar Maria Chorus, several collaborators honoured meditation, yogic practices, and womb health, as artist Tabita Rezaire invited her friends to create ‘sonic offerings’ to the Moon. The project reflected forms of community and collectivism in generating healing – whether biological, cultural or social.

Based on the (H) for Health card, we can acknowledge that health can take on ‘unexpected formats’. So in planning the path forward through the Urban Canvas Deck, I wondered about community and social support as a form of healthcare.

Let’s play (S) for Social Afforestation.

The term ‘Social Afforestation’ can be broken up as two words. In ecological terms, afforestation refers to the planting of trees where forests have never existed before in order to combat deforestation in adjacent areas, and then with the added “social” in front of this, we can deduce that etymology of this term refers to the metaphorical planting, i.e. active investment, to look after a social network that is being “deforested”.

Immediately, I think of Social, an exhibition of digital and printed material acting as an archive of Cape Town’s independent arts ecology.

“Alongside Cape Town’s more formalised network of commercial galleries and institutions is a dynamic history of artist-initiated projects. Collaborative processes create independent spaces, exhibitions, events, and publications which are often momentary, but which have the potential to bloom into long-lasting, generative relationships.”
– Khanya Mashabela, Curator

Still carrying the remnants of the Biodiversity cards, (S) for Social Afforestation draws an interesting analogy between forests and human networks. A forest is dependant on the richness of the soil, the suitability of the climate, and gestalt of what lives inside of it.

Naturally connected to this card, is (L) for Livability.

We can examine the main definition, but if we look at the bottom of the card, the Urban Canvas Deck also provides alternative definitions that we can exercise. (L) is also for: Love, Land-use, Livelihoods.

I am most interested in Love, and the core role it plays in the building of a community or a network. To quote Francisco Berzunza, curator of You to Me, Me to You: “Privately, the love relationship that inspired this exhibition challenges what love is supposed to look like. One can speak about so many issues through emotion, through simply speaking about loving, the human right to love and be loved.”

(L) for Livability may connect to other cards, but as we’ve used an alternative definition, how do we decide which concepts Love connects to?

When asked what love can do for the broader community, Berzunza answered in part, “Most people are incredibly curious, but many people are not given the opportunity to be very curious. You, at A4, are responsible for providing these opportunities of curiosity for people in your country.” Aligned with this thinking, (L) for Love could connect to (P) for Placemaking.

How do we make a place? In partnership with A4 Arts Foundation and proyectoamil, Kunsthalle Bangkok presented MEND PIECE by Yoko Ono.

The work involves participants mending shattered ceramic objects using simplistic materials like glue, string, and tape. The core aim was to incite communal mending – turning ceramic pieces into the sum of many parts, turning an abandoned building into Kunsthalle Bangkok, turning individuals into a community.

‘Mend carefully.

Think of mending the world

at the same time.

y.o.’

We’ve played a substantial hand through the Urban Canvas Deck with A4’s database, and the game can continue or we can choose to end it.

In his 1953 novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin writes, “Go back to where you started or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it.”

Tell It to the Mountains was an exhibition that traced Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s return to his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape, in conversation with Mikhael Subotzky.

The two artists’ shared enquiry into home, memory, and displacement resonates with the way the Urban Canvas Deck encourages us to move back through our choices, seeing connections to the places where we spend our lives. The exhibition’s engagement with distance — between past and present, between home and elsewhere — mirrors the way our urban narratives are constantly in flux, shaped by the stories we choose to tell.

As we move through the Urban Canvas Deck, we realize that no path is linear, and no concept exists in isolation. The game invites us to retrace our steps, revisit connections, and reimagine our understanding of the city. Like Sobekwa’s reflection on truth and return, our journey through these urban narratives does not necessarily have an endpoint.

Instead, it loops back on itself, allowing us to re-engage with our surroundings in new ways. In this way, the game never truly ends — it continues as long as we remain curious, attentive, and open to the stories embedded in the urban landscape.