Conference #CreativeUprising – Unlearning for change

The 2017 edition of the conference considers the theme of arts education and arts in education.

This is interrogated through the perspective of the rise of the decolonized Creative. This process calls for unlearning and relearning and its development must be recognised as an opportunity to provoke, counsel and protest a new South African future for Arts Education in basic, tertiary, online and informal education. The programme will draw on past conversations and findings of this already rising movement determined on questioning what is relevant and how we replace an imposed, *unAfrican system?

The removal of the Rhodes statue in 2015 was not only a dismantling of a monolithic construct of exclusion but it also gave rise to a group of empowered activists that were born out of conflict with an art object. This uprising calls for a critical reimagining of how we see, understand and teach in this new ‘art space’ that has turned a cultural site into a classroom, a protest into an art performance and the students into teachers. A new post-colonial, post-Fanonian, curriculum must be considered for the decolonised Creative.

The conference sees the term ‘decolonisation’ as a catalyst for moving towards a context-based curricula.  Presentations and demonstrations will use this concept as a golden thread to bind the conference narrative together.

The two day conference will include an individualized programme for educators and school learners that has been designed to inspire change. The progamme combines presentations, performances and opportunities to hear the voices of art learners, educators, trainers, academics and the arts community.

The ACT | UJ  #CreativeUprising conference will take place at the University of Johannesburg from 27-28 July 2017 and is presented by the Arts & Culture Trust and UJ Arts & Culture (a division of FADA) with support from SAMRO Foundation.