Melville’s community spirit sparks vibrant street revival

“Melville isn’t just a suburb,” the website Joburg.co.za says, “it’s a vibe, a rhythm, and a beating heart of Johannesburg’s creative scene. It’s where old soul charm collides with modern quirk, where vintage bookshops sit next to artisan coffee joints, and where every street corner feels like a story waiting to unfold.”

Now the Melville Art Mile, a new monthly “First Thursdays” evening event, has begun the beautiful process of unfolding those very street-corner stories. Piloted in December 2025, it combines taking a walk, driving or using a tuk-tuk to navigate a route that connects a diversity of shops, galleries, studios and eateries stretching from Chatou Road in Richmond to 7th Street, 4th Avenue and Main Road in Melville.

It includes the iconic Die Pienk Kerk, the Melville Mansions collective, The Sourcery coffee shop, Resource Gallery and 27 Boxes, which has been rebranded as the Joburg Artist Market (JAM). Think murals and graffiti, artworks, books, historic buildings, street cafés and cocktail spots, but also people and connection.

“It may have been my idea, but it was always going to be a project for the community by the community,” says entrepreneur Aubrey Moloto. And it’s a long, layered story about how the idea unfolded in his head.

Born and raised in Melville, Moloto left to pursue his passion in the music and film business. Then he had a few “big life moments”, an existential crisis, and did a U-turn back to Melville in lockdown. When he started Snaps On Seventh, a media start-up, Melville was still reeling from the pandemic and enduring one of its roughest patches.

Moloto used his fierce work ethic and charm to become a street photographer, which then developed into Melville Untold, a weekly newsletter about the hood.

During that time, he met many local business owners, covering the movers and shakers and highlighting the good Melville has to offer. Now, there are gallery exhibitions, special events and creative workshops every week.

In March 2024, The Happening took place. This festival, organised by businesses and residents, brought together the community in a family day that saw the spirit of collaboration soar and led to upgrades, community clean-ups and more.

Then Moloto went on a film shoot to Cape Town and encountered a First Thursdays event in Mitchells Plain, where neighbourhoods had festivities, food trucks and street entertainment – and everyone took to the streets together.

First Thursdays, pioneered in London and replicated across the world, is big in Cape Town.

While he was in the Mother City, Moloto also came across Bree Street Sundays, an open-street, car-free experiment in which a major inner-city street is successfully closed every Sunday.

“That’s when I thought we could bring the two ideas together in Melville,” says Moloto. “It was all about breaking down the silos, about bringing the First Thursdays idea here and making Melville’s comeback being centred on creativity.”

Moloto then curated a walk in the hood called Melville Unlocked: Voices of our Village, which he showcased in the Jozi My Jozi Walks project. Its success added to the impetus for an art mile. “My superpower is that I connect people,” says Moloto, “and I knew all the players and how to bring them together.” DM

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.