The clock starts ticking as we edge closer to the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Arts Festival. The Faculty of Arts and Design is already weaving its magic, choreographing every detail for this year’s edition.
From the buzzing Arts Campus, the festival will spring to life from 11 – 13 September 2025, ready to dazzle, inspire and ignite the campus with creativity.
This year's Festival is presented in partnership with the City of Tshwane and Tshwane FM. Building on the theme of ARTIVISM, the Festival centres on AGENCY – exploring the actions and interventions we undertake to cultivate a creative consciousness in these challenging times. It aims to address social challenges creatively while fostering responsible citizenship and heightened social awareness.
This year's Festival offers visitors a diverse lineup within our bumper pack programme, including exhibitions, performances, workshops, demonstrations, virtual reality experiences, masterclasses, a student film fest and round-table discussions.
As part of the Department of Visual Communication's Student Film Fest, second-year Motion Picture Production students will screen video essays and short films they produced as collaborative student projects with peers from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom on the topic Third Cinema Today. This collaboration was part of an official COIL project between the two universities.
TUT students produced these films as part of their subject African Film and Criticism while it formed part of the Global Cinemas course of the University of Southampton.
COIL stands for Collaborative Online International Learning initiatives, which involve connecting students and faculty from different countries for collaborative projects and exchanges using digital tools. These universities use COIL to internationalise their curriculum, provide authentic global learning experiences and foster intercultural communication among students without requiring physical travel. The Department has been involved with COIL projects since 2014.
Though these students live in different countries, they manage to work on the same project together and the result is these video essays/short films that will be screened on Thursday, 11 September.
Murena Emmanuel Netshitangani will return to his alma mater on Thursday, 11 September, to screen his essay film, The Duality, which he produced as a Postgraduate Diploma student in the Motion Picture Production programme. This comes after he recently won the “Best African Film Award” at the World Film Festival in Cannes. After the screening, he will give a talk about building his own career as a filmmaker and the challenges he had to overcome from being a student to winning an award at an international film festival.
Netshitangani also won the Best Student Film Award at TUT’s Film Awards in 2024. This award was sponsored by the Joburg Film Festival, a partner of TUT’s Motion Picture Production programme.
Furthermore, as part of the Department of Visual Communication's Integrated Communication Design industry collaboration, students and visitors will have the opportunity to engage with a range of stakeholders from the Nelson Mandela Foundation and experience first-hand how design can impact the world through a series of engagements. These engagements include:
Walkabout talk about NAN, behind the scenes, designing Named After Nelson (NAN) exhibition How can you transform a living map of Mandela’s placenames into an exhibition that people can feel, navigate and take home? In this session, Dr Yolandi Burger (Research Fellow, Loughborough University), Anne-Young Maharaj (Researcher, Nelson Mandela Foundation): Exhibition Design and Management, and Zandile Myeka (Archivist, Nelson Mandela Foundation): Design and Archival Practice – Points of Intersection, will unpack the design and production of NAN from concept framing and content architecture to the visual system.
Nelson Mandela Foundation Talk: Madiba's Legacy – Its Meaning for Young South Africans Join us for a round-table discussion with Razia Saleh (Head of Archive & Research, Nelson Mandela Foundation), titled Madiba's Legacy – Its Meaning for Young South Africans. Together we will ask: How do citizens claim space, contest symbols and co-create futures that embrace complexity, widen inclusion and translate remembrance into democratic practice?
Roundtable with the curators of Named After Nelson and the Mandela poster project collective exhibitions In this round-table discussion, the curators of both exhibitions come together to explore Mandela Lived – a place-based “graphic heritage” inscribed on bridges, parks, theatres and community memory. It intersects with globally circulating iconography that helped render Mandela a mutable cultural symbol. Together, they invite viewers to reimagine legacy as something co-created in streets and studios alike.
Commercial Photography alumni from the Department of Visual Communication will be hosting the Transcendence photographic exhibition that brings together striking fashion photography, pushing beyond style to explore imagination, identity and new ways of seeing. Visionary works from the student portfolios of S. Tshukudu, M.S. Kekana, A.C. Nkosi, L. Makgethe and L. Mjaji are on show.
Festivalgoers can also join the Department of Performing Arts for a variety of postgraduate productions, including directing productions, poetry sessions, children's theatre, structured Master’s productions, jazz ensemble concerts, storytelling, theatre in education, dance performances and classical voice master classes, to name a few.
Visitors are also invited to an immersive tunnel experience that explores the intricate world of theatre technology and craftsmanship. Journey through interactive displays celebrating student innovation and past productions where the magic of theatrical craft comes alive.
Visit our Interior Design studios for a 3D virtual reality experience, design technology demonstrations, a coursework exhibition and a showroom.
Visitors can look behind the scenes at our Glass Open Studio, featuring live hot-glass demonstrations. We are the only tertiary institution in the country offering Glass as a specialisation as part of our Fine and Applied Arts qualification.
Make sure to view the work of young creatives in our painting, printmaking, sculpture, surface design and fibre arts studios.
The Jewellery Design programme will present an exciting sandcasting workshop where visitors will be able to cast a bronze key holder (various stencils to choose from). The cost for the workshop is R250 per person.
Fashion Design will showcase its students’ talent with mini fashion shows during the day on Thursday, 11 September, and with Tie-dye and Batik demonstrations on 12 September.
Tshwane FM will broadcast live from campus daily, featuring interviews and unplugged performances, taking our Festival into the homes of our communities.
The Festival is part of the Faculty of Arts and Design's dynamic, cutting-edge teaching and learning curricula. It creates an ideal platform for students to put their knowledge into practice through this experiential learning opportunity, shaping future-ready graduates.
By pooling resources and engaging with industry stakeholders, the Faculty celebrates and showcases the remarkable talent of its students, staff, alums and community. Visitors will gain an insight into how the Faculty makes knowledge work and the difference that community engagement can make.
We will showcase the best work from the Hello Community Arts Festival, Gifted and Rooted in Purpose and other community engagement projects.
This is the ideal opportunity for prospective students interested in the creative industries to come and experience what is on offer and get first-hand information to assist them with their future career choices.
The Festival culminates in the Dean’s Concert – Her Voice, Her Stage, Her Story – a tribute to the leadership of Prof Nalini Moodley, Executive Dean. This event, in partnership with the South African State Theatre (SAST), will take place at the SAST Opera Theatre on Saturday, 13 September at 19:00.
Visit www.tut.ac.za or www.tutfadshowcase.ac.za for updates, or email
