There’s a witty status currently being shared on social media: “A good neighbour is one who doesn’t put a password on their Wi-Fi”.
While Flow subscribes to the “good neighbour” principle, we’re not quite ready to give out our Wi-Fi password – but we are keen to meet our neighbours and introduce them to Flow Communications.
Which is how, as new tenants of 2 Rosebank Road and in a gesture of neighbourliness, two of us, Flow interns Camilla Kohlmeyer and Nthabiseng Shongwe, set out to introduce Flow to surrounding businesses.
Our neighbours include an array of different organisations, ranging from lawyers and architects to an African artefacts provider and a domestic worker service provider; the variety of trade and services offered in a 500m radius around Flow really is impressive.
We started our journey with a friendly face at the front desk of lawyers Cyril Ziman & Associates Inc. Next, we headed to Jan Smuts Avenue, where Cruises International’s posters and brochures, advertising tropical holidays, left us yearning for the sun and the sea.
We then chatted to the staff at Domestic Bliss, a company that commits itself to upliftment, education and skills development of individuals looking for domestic work – to the benefit of both employee and employer.
Our next stop was a campus of sorts, home to four companies. Our first meet and greet here was in a warehouse containing a massive African artefact collection. The company, Togu’na, is a purveyor of beautiful, authentic African art pieces used for interior decoration. We spent a while with the ladies at Togu'na, where our curiosity was fuelled by their wealth of knowledge of every artefact – each piece has a unique African story that they shared with enthusiasm.
Next up was Kaross, home to hand-embroidered Shangaan textiles. This is an organisation that strives to create a platform that recognises the textile and embroidery work produced by the hands of South Africans. Over the past 23 years, Kaross has become a voice for more than 700 Shangaan people living in South Africa.
On the same campus we came across Art Logic and Sarah Calburn Architects, where our gifts were well received by the friendly staff at the respective offices.
Our last stop was the beautiful grounds of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung foundation, whose global goal is political education and playing a role in the "intellectual current of democratic socialism".
It was a pleasure meeting our immediate neighbours and we look forward to building relationships with them in the future.
Our gifts to our neighbours included an invitation to visit Flow’s new offices, where we look forward to sharing our passion for communication (but not our Wi-Fi password).
