(Lock)downloads: first download free

We’re launching a very special project – #meetinthemaking – that we hope will answer some of the frustrations and challenges we’re now facing, while providing a way to buy, engage with and share art in a way we’ve never done before.

This one-of-a-kind project was born during the national lockdown of 2020, in a bid to keep alive the essential activities of artmaking, connecting and creative collaboration.

We asked some of our favourite artist collaborators to share a line drawing with the 50ty/50ty community. Although copyrighted, these unlimited editions are free to download, print, colour, share, frame; in service of one of our grandest collaborations yet: connecting the spaces between us during a time of unusual isolation, inactivity and uncertainty.

Unlike your run-of-the-mill colouring books (which offer admittedly welcome distraction), these considered drawings have been created by acclaimed, professional creatives. Each artwork invites you to connect with the artist’s own practice – to enter their world by engaging with the marks that followed their creative, physical gestures, adding your own strokes and colour in a kind of visual conversation. At the very least, it should keep the kids busy.

The first download will be free to newsletter subscribers. After that, downloads will be just R115 each, with 50% of proceeds going to the Peninsula School Feeding Association. This vital organisation provides balanced, nutritious meals to over 26 000 school children in poverty, and their needs have been intensified by the lockdown’s extended school holidays. One download purchase will feed one child for one month.

All we ask is that you share your experience on Instagram – your colouring activities, the end result and what you do with the final, coloured-in creation. Tag us @50ty50typrints and use the hashtag #meetinthemaking to contribute to an ongoing catalogue. One day, when all this is over, we will publish the collection.

Use Coupon Code FREEDOWNLOAD to get your first download free