Dear Portfolio Committee on Arts and Culture,
Are you aware that to study Art, Design or Architecture you need a portfolio as part of your application? but only 5% of schools provide visual arts for Matric. The opportunities to produce a portfolio and enter these professions are therefore extremely limited. Yet art education teaches PROBLEM SOLVING a vital skill to be effective during the 4th industrial revolution. Furthermore our INDIGENOUS VISUAL HERITAGE uses sophisticated mathematical skills. Ndebele painting Zulu basketware, Sotho murals all deploy mathematical principles. Yet this knowledge is not part of our arts curriculum and it is dying.
Our organisation, the Arts and Ubuntu Trust attempts to confront these anomalies by working in community art centres in peri-urban and rural areas nation-wide and producing multi-media materials which record some of this dying knowledge. Furthermore it is now widely recognised that development without awareness of culture and sensitivity to culture is doomed to fail.
Please talk to us.
Sincerely