The 60 000 people forcibly evicted barely had time to pack their possessions after receiving their eviction notices from the apartheid government. Most left with little more than a single suitcase.

So we recreated these suitcases, as if they had each been packed by a single evictee, back in 1966.

Then we took these historical suitcases to one place that the 8 million odd annual visitors to the city have to pass through – Cape Town International Airport.

We placed them on the baggage carousels in both International and Domestic Arrivals.

We also tied specially-designed luggage tags onto newly arrived visitors’ suitcases.

Each tag told the individual story of a victim of forced removals in District Six and gave visitors a 50% entrance fee discount to the District Six Museum.

We also brought some of the evictees themselves to the airport to share their stories.

We created three different historical suitcases and filled them with objects representative of the people and the time of District Six in 1966. Each suitcase told the real-life story of one of the 60 000 forced evictees, together with family photographs, eviction notices and apartheid-era identity documents with racial classifications like “CAPE COLOURED”.

Once visitors had seen our District Six suitcases in the baggage collection area, we followed up with an activation stand with in the main airport lobby, with District Six Museum-branded pull up banners and and brochures telling more about the Museum.

This stand was manned by volunteers and actual evictees themselves in branded t-shirts, to share their first person stories of District Six in in one-on-one conversations with interested visitors.

We were at the airport for the full day before the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, the biggest annual event hosted by the City of Cape Town.

In one day, we reached 22 000 visitors to Cape Town. In relation to the Museum’s monthly average visitor number of 4000, this represents a 525% increase in year-on-year awareness.

The types of people we spoke to one-on-one included:

first time visitors from overseas

regular visitors from overseas

South Africans who had never heard of District Six

South Africans who themselves had experienced forced removals in other parts of the country

Capetonians who came to the airport to collect family members

Capetonians collecting business travellers and tour groups

All people across this spectrum accepted our 50% off offer and committed to visit the Museum.

In addition, we had requests for further contact from the Museum from a history teacher and several local event organizers.