Turns out, when you drop a bright yellow creative playground into the middle of Rosebank and tell Joburg to go BOS or go home, Joburg takes the assignment seriously.
From 28 – 30 August, BOS Ice Tea transformed a space in Rosebank into a very public invitation to make a mess. Joburgers stepped inside to paint, scribble, splash, experiment and add something of their own to an evolving portrait of the city.
There were no classes, workshops or pressure. BOS Ice Tea simply created the canvas, handed Joburg the tools, and invited people to get stuck in and see where their creativity took them. By the end of the weekend, the walls were layered with colour, ideas, experiments and the creative fingerprints of everyone who had passed through. The result was colourful, chaotic and impossible to recreate. In other words, just like Joburg.
Joburg has never been short on ideas
In Johannesburg, creativity is everywhere. But creating with no end goal, no expectation and nothing to prove can be harder to come by. So much of what we make has somewhere to go, something to achieve or someone to impress. The simple pleasure of picking something up, trying something out, and seeing what happens can get lost along the way. BOS Studio created space for exactly that: making for no other reason than because it feels good.
“Watching it all weekend, you could feel the energy build. Everything that’s special about Joburg and its people came together in Rosebank”, says Maura van Styrum, Head of Marketing at BOS Ice Tea. “We watched people paint, scribble, build on each other’s ideas and slowly turn a blank space into this incredible collaborative artwork made by Joburg. No one person could have planned what it became, and that was the beauty of it. It was completely reflective of the creativity that lives in each and every person in this city. We want to thank Joburg for coming together and reminding us why we do this in the first place.”
Play. Create. Make a mess.
The invitation reached artists, creators and curious passersby, who simply wanted to see what was happening. They all came through to leave their mark. For BOS, the success of the Studio was about what happened once people were inside.
For one weekend, a busy corner of Rosebank became a small experiment in what can happen when creativity is made accessible, physical, and free from expectation. People stopped, played, and made things just for the fun of it. Not every hobby needs to become a side hustle, and not everything you make needs to be impressive enough to show off. Sometimes you can paint on a wall just because there is paint and there is a wall. That freedom sits at the heart of BOS.
Going BOS isn’t about being outrageous for the sake of it. It’s about getting out of autopilot, following an impulse, and being open to whatever happens next. Joburg showed us exactly what that looks like.
The BOS Studio may have packed up, but what Joburg created inside was never intended to disappear with the yellow space. Every spontaneous scribble has contributed to a collective portrait of Johannesburg made by the people who give the city its character. And BOS isn’t letting all that creativity end there. What’s next? That stays under wraps for now. But soon, Joburg will get to see its collective creativity out in the world again.
About BOS Ice Tea:
The BOS philosophy is simple. Healthy can be fun. BOS harnesses the benefits of rooibos to create a premium range of products. Delivered in bright, bold, colourful packaging, BOS products bring fun and great taste to everyday life. Inspired by the expression “Go BOS,” which means to have crazy good fun, this approach is at the heart of the BOS experience. BOS organic rooibos is farmed ethically on Klipopmekaar, a farm high in the Cederberg Mountains, the only place in the world where rooibos grows.