A week and a half ago, the final ‘Unruly’ show took place at the Baxter theatre. This wrapped up two intense weeks with lots of valuable conversations and discussions with different types of audiences. With four community shows in locations around the peninsula, four shows for general audiences at the Baxter, two for baboon rangers, one for high school students and one for people from civic groups and other key stakeholders, this new iteration of the show was seen by something close to 900 people (we are still compiling the numbers).
The discussions and feedback after the shows, some happening in the circle immediately after, other shared later through our mini survey, have been interesting, challenging, and rich input to our ongoing research to understand how people are experiencing these issues. Here we should note that the audiences attending are not randomly selected and are not representative of the general public – this is why these dialogues only form one part of the data we collect in the Unruly Natures project. Nevertheless, Unruly and the collaboration with Empatheatre has allowed us to do things that is not possible with conventional science, and we are incredibly grateful for their work. A special thanks also to Chantal Willie-Petersen whose music brought a new level of magic to the performances!
New study about baboon rangers’ knowledge
This also brings us to a new member of the Unruly Natures team. Alice van Veen is doing her Master’s degree at Stockholm Resilience Centre, and is currently visiting us in Cape Town to collect data for her thesis project. Alice is studying the knowledge held by baboon rangers, who are deployed every day to minimise negative interactions between baboons and humans across the peninsula. Cape Town’s Urban Baboon Programme is unique in its size and mission which means its rangers are likely to have knowledge about urban wildlife management that does not exist elsewhere.
Cape Town’s Urban Baboon Programme is unique in its size and mission which means its rangers are likely to have knowledge about urban wildlife management that does not exist elsewhere. As emerged in our 2023 survey, rangers are highly trusted by residents and a large majority want to keep them or even increase their numbers. For these reasons, we believe it is incredibly important to understand their role and their experiences, and highlight their perspectives on the situation. We are very grateful to NCC for facilitating Alice’s interviews with rangers.
Looking ahead, the coming year is going to focus on completing the analysis of the data collected so far in Unruly Natures, and publishing the findings in scientific journals. We are also expecting the completion of the short documentary about the project, as well as a filmed version of the ‘Unruly’ play. Alice is expecting to finish her thesis by June 2025, and Kinga’s PhD work will continue beyond that. Watch this space for more updates!
Unruly Natures Project 