The Lockdown Collection was developed to run during the initial 21 days of the lockdown, to capture the unprecedented times through the eyes of prominent South African artists as a live-online auction. These 21 art pieces by renowned local artists were sold to raise money to support South African artists. Each piece was revealed daily and reflected the thoughts, feelings and vision of artists’ COVID-19 experience. The overwhelming support and demand has led to more collections, such as the Student Collection, a Canadian Green Recovery Collection and also an Open Call Collection launched in 2021.

As the wave of business closures fell during the hard lockdown and funding uncertainty grew, the Rainbow Academy embarked on a fundraising campaign from March–November 2020 to sustain their organisation by building an easily accessible online teaching and learning platform. Learners in the academy come from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Western Cape, with no access to the internet or data services, smartphones or tablet devices; hence this campaign to raise funds for these essential resources to ensure continued learning amidst the constraints and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fundraising campaign included a successful online Christmas and New Year's show, written and performed by the learners from the academy.

Womandlachallenge was born from challenges exacerbated by lockdown, like food security, health matters and gender based violence in homes. In partnership with GBV dedicated NPOs to raise awareness and funding for GBV and Child Abuse representative organisations, Womandlachallenge was launched on South Africa’s National Women’s Day. The project included a run, a performance, and the launch of a street mural. The mural was designed and created by a group of social creatives mentored by Kathy Berman, the founder of the Museum Store Africa, during a one-year accelerator on a street in Maboneng. Inspired by the BLACK LIVES MATTER street painting, the mural spelt out a colourful WOMANDLA.

Lumières d'Afriques is a touring group exhibition comprising 54 artists from each country making up the African continent. It presents work inspired by a single theme ‘The Illuminated Africa’. It is premised on the idea that the 21st century belongs to Africa, while reflecting on the challenges facing the development of the continent. For the first time in contemporary African history, 54 artists committed to creating a single original work of art to highlight the challenge that energy access represents for the continent’s sustainable future. The installation includes artists filming their creative process for each varying piece from their environment.

The National Arts Festival is South Africa’s oldest and premiere arts festival. It is the largest multi-arts festival in Africa and one of the largest in the world. The Festival presents a strong programme of theatre, dance, music, visual art, digital arts, film, comedy, street theatre, crafts, exhibitions and newly emerging hybrid art forms. 2020 saw the 47th edition of the Festival, presented virtually in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists wove their stories into pixels, bringing a new digital heartbeat to life and opening up the South African arts sector to extraordinary possibilities, as over 80 000 global visitors clicked onto the #VNAF platform.

The LIFELINES Chandelier project is an artistic homage to the lifelines and the medical scientists who have ensured the delivery of unfailing excellence during the unprecedented pandemic. Making an emotional statement on how we are all connected, even with enforced distancing and COVID isolation, the installation highlights the significance of the science behind Adcock Ingram's Critical Care during a time when mortality is ever-present, and the idea of LIFELINES as critical to our survival medically, emotionally, and financially. The project aligns the ‘A’ of art into STEM education.

The Lockdown Collection was developed to run during the initial 21 days of the lockdown, to capture the unprecedented times through the eyes of prominent South African artists as a live-online auction. These 21 art pieces by renowned local artists were sold to raise money to support South African artists. Each piece was revealed daily and reflected the thoughts, feelings and vision of artists’ COVID-19 experience. The overwhelming support and demand has led to more collections, such as the Student Collection, a Canadian Green Recovery Collection and also an Open Call Collection launched in 2021.

Womandlachallenge was born from challenges exacerbated by lockdown, like food security, health matters and gender based violence in homes. In partnership with GBV dedicated NPOs to raise awareness and funding for GBV and Child Abuse representative organisations, Womandlachallenge was launched on South Africa’s National Women’s Day - 9 August. The project included a run, a performance and the launch of a street mural. The mural was designed and created by a group of social creatives mentored by Kathy Berman, the founder of the Museum Store Africa, during a one-year accelerator on a street in Maboneng. Inspired by the BLACK LIVES MATTER street painting, the mural spelt out a colourful WOMANDLA.

For the past five years, the Outreach Foundation has offered an after-school drama programme for young learners and the youth in Hillbrow, in partnership with Tswelopele Frail Care Centre and Johannesburg Society for the blind. It has run as an intergenerational programme on themes like identity, belonging, cultural beliefs and generational curses that has inspired intergenerational knowledge sharing. After suspending the programme, Letters to You and Me, the 5th anniversary of our intergenerational programme, was developed as a digital storytelling training programme and a training manual, based on Gcebile Dlamini’s five years of engaging intergenerational theatre-making practice. Letters To You and Me, the 2020 iteration of the intergenerational project, was also co-funded by the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners.

Originally a physically interactive music project before the pandemic, the Marimba Jam project made the transition to becoming an eight-week online programme, offering an alternative to the usual marimba band classes. Aware of the challenge of access to a marimba instrument by students, the programme (titled #LockdownJam) offered innovative ways to learn music and how to DIY instruments with material available in their homes. The programme culminated in a mass item, which involved every student recording their individual part to a song and putting it all together in a music video, positively affecting the mental health of students.

Masks4Good was formed by the Museum Store Africa founder and communities to produce and distribute hand-made masks before it was made mandatory. Built on a pay-it-forward principle, for each mask purchased, one was distributed to communities in need for free. It was an urgent response to the hard lockdown’s impact on 48 small creative and design enterprises that lost income as a result of the Javett Art Centre (where art, design and craft are sold) being forced to close.

The Lockdown Collection was developed to run during the initial 21 days of the lockdown, to capture the unprecedented times through the eyes of prominent South African artists as a live–online auction. These 21 art pieces by renowned local artists were sold to raise money to support South African artists. Each piece was revealed daily and reflected the thoughts, feelings and vision of artists’ COVID-19 experience. The overwhelming support and demand has led to more collections, such as the Student Collection, a Canadian Green Recovery Collection and also an Open Call Collection launched in 2021.

The Blind Alphabet Project: Letter B – Babery to Bigeminate (1993) from the MTN Art Collection was produced in line with a digital experience, promoted as part of MTN and UJ’s venture into the 4IR age. The project was inspired by insight from visually impaired individuals on the outdated nature of the Braille type format. The 40 works of the Letter B within the Blind Alphabet were augmented by music written by contemporary composer, Jaco Meyer, as well as voice-overs and QR codes. This enabled the visually impaired to access the works through cellular technology – listening to the music and rationale behind each artwork through earphones. The visually abled also got to appreciate this body of work in a unique way.

The National Arts Festival is South Africa’s oldest and premiere arts festival. It is the largest multi-arts festival in Africa and one of the largest in the world. The Festival presents a strong programme of theatre, dance, music, visual art, digital arts, film, comedy, street theatre, crafts, exhibitions and newly emerging hybrid art forms. 2020 saw the 47th edition of the Festival, presented virtually in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists wove their stories into pixels, bringing a new digital heartbeat to life and opening up the South African arts sector to extraordinary possibilities, as over 80 000 global visitors clicked onto the #VNAF platform.

For the past five years, the Outreach Foundation has offered an after-school drama programme for young learners and the youth in Hillbrow, in partnership with Tswelopele Frail Care Centre and Johannesburg Society for the blind. It has run as an intergenerational programme on themes like identity, belonging, cultural beliefs and generational curses, that has inspired intergenerational knowledge sharing. After suspending the programme, Letters to You and Me, the 5th anniversary of our intergenerational programme, was developed as a digital storytelling training programme and a training manual, based on Gcebile Dlamini’s five years of engaging intergenerational theatre making practice. Letters To You and Me, the 2020 iteration of the intergenerational project, was also co-funded by the International Relief Fund of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut, and other partners.

Established in 2011 to recognise emerging Southern African fine artists who demonstrate exceptional ability, the programme offers selected visual artists exhibition and mentorship opportunities, with art material sponsorship and a platform to have work translated in a different medium, in collaboration with the Spier Artisan Studios. All of this is aimed at developing artists’ professional practice. In the face of the pandemic, Nando’s arranged the Nando’s Creative Showcase event at Constitution Hill in November 2020, where a small COVID-compliant group of media and VIPs were invited to experience the various Nando’s Creativity programmes, including the Nando’s Creative Exchange exhibition.

The MTN SA Foundation and the UJ Art Gallery have collaborated successfully over the past four years by deliberating significant themes derived from the present social construct as reflected in artworks in both the MTN and UJ Art Collections. These projects are accompanied by educational and mentorship programmes, while an emerging Artist Development Programme was added in 2018. Exhibitions include 'Shifting Conversations' in 2017, which engaged on colonial and post-colonial narratives; 'Continuing Conversations' in 2018, addressing various forms of identity through portraiture; and 'Conversing the Land' in 2019/2020, focused on depictions of landscape in all its conflicting manifestations. In light of the pandemic, a full digital experience was introduced in line with the 4IR venture.

The International Public Art Festival is a mural art project that gathered 24 local and international volunteering artists to create public murals in the community of Salt River from 7–16 February 2020. The Festival showcases exceptional street art talent while also adding an economic injection and presenting a strong social focus on the local communities. The participating artists are strategically selected to form a diverse group of local and international artists from varied levels of experience and diverse backgrounds. The artists are encouraged to learn from each other, exchanging skills, experiences and networks whilst volunteering their time creating a walking art gallery.

The project was formed to address the crisis in the performing arts, and to contribute to the survival of both the arts and tourism industries that are amongst the most fragile in the local economy. It also provided live theatre events for audiences starved of artistic and cultural events because of the COVID-19 pandemic – the Summer Theatre Season comprised 10 new and existing professional productions, curated and presented under safe, socially-distanced, open-air circumstances.

As the wave of business closures fell during the hard lockdown and funding uncertainty grew, the Rainbow Academy embarked on a fundraising campaign from March–November 2020 to sustain their organisation by building an easily accessible online teaching and learning platform. Learners in the academy come from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Western Cape, with no access to the internet or data services, smartphones or tablet devices; hence this campaign to raise funds for these essential resources to ensure continued learning amidst the constraints and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fundraising campaign included a successful online Christmas and New Year's show, written and performed by the learners from the academy.