Connecting campus and community through the visual arts: A Stellenbosch University Initiative

The initiative is a place -based, art-led education initiative at Ikhaya Primary School in Kayamandi that responds to the enduring educational and spatial inequalities created by apartheid in Stellenbosch. The project builds a visible and symbolic pathway between a historically excluded community and Stellenbosch University using ceramic hands shaped by learners and transformed into birds representing belonging, aspiration, and future possibility. Grounded in the concept of education and visual art as repair, the initiative works not only through curriculum but through environment, experience, and shared authorship. Through making, planting, designing, and caring for shared spaces, children develop responsibility, dignity, agency, and a sense of collective belonging. Ultimately, ARISE demonstrates how a university and community can move beyond outreach toward repair transforming both educational space and social imagination so that children can see themselves as part of the town’s future rather than outside it. Collaborators : Initiative holder: Prof Jonathan Jansen: Education Faculty, collaborators, Ikhaya School, AVReQ, members from Khayamandi Arts Community, Stellenbosch Academy of Photography and Design