

Breaking Barriers to Creative Learning: Part II
The Open Window Teacher’s Conference aims to bring together educators, researchers, and practitioners in the field of creative arts education to explore innovative strategies for making the art and design curriculum more accessible to diverse learners. The conference will provide a platform for knowledge-sharing, practical workshops, and panel discussions that address challenges and opportunities in art education.
Date: Friday 29 August
Venue: Open Window, Blairgowrie
Catering: Lunch
Theme Exploration in the Programme:
The programme of Breaking Barriers to Creative Learning Part II aims to explore how we as educators can make the art and design curriculum more relevant to diverse learners within a local context. Whether we lecture future teachers or reach high school learners directly, how do we actively guide our students to truly care about and engage with the curriculum in a meaningful way?
Breaking Barriers to Creative Learning Part II offers the opportunity for discussions on decolonising the curriculum—or rather, approaching the curriculum in a decolonised manner—alternative and non-traditional methodologies of teaching that cater to different learning styles and abilities, creative problem-solving, addressing barriers to accessibility in arts education (including socioeconomic and cultural factors), the integration of digital tools and emerging technologies in arts education, and more! Join us as we foster collaboration among educators, institutions, and industry professionals to enhance curriculum development and showcase best practices in inclusive arts education.
Programme
PROGRAMME:
08:00 – 08:30 Registration and Tea
08:30 – 08:35 Welcome address by Jayne Robertson (Academic Head)
08:35 – 08:45 Welcome by Research and Collections Department, Gontse Mathabathe
Introduction to the Teacher’s Portal
08:45 – 09:00 ICEBREAKER with Chiedza Kehle (Open Window)
09:00 – 09:30 Keynote Speaker: Sameer Rawjee
The Future of Creative Education in the AI Era
SESSION 1 PANEL 1:
Breaking Barriers to Creative Education Part I
Chaired by Gontse Mathabathe
09:40 – 10:10 Robyn Keet (Open Window) with Q&A
Creativity & Profit: Thriving Without Sacrificing Your Art
10:10 – 10:40 Lala Crafford (Open Window) with Q&A
Neurodivergence and Creative Career Paths
10:40 – 11:15 Morne Venter (Open Window) with Q&A
Gaming Creativity: Using Roleplaying as a Creative Thinking Mechanic
11:15 – 11:30 BREAK for tea and snacks
11:30 – 12:00 Adriaan De La Rey (Open Window) with Q&A
Drift and Duration: Reclaiming Time Through the Long Take
12:00 – 12:30 Candice Edwards (Open Window) with Q&A
Exploring Methods to Minimise Procrastination in Education
12:30 – 12:35 Formal Close of Talks Programme (Gontse Mathabathe)
12:35 – 13:30 Lunch
SESSION 1 PANEL 2:
Breaking Barriers to Creative Education Part I
Chaired by Roxy Do Rego
09:40 – 10:10 Liam Rothballer (Open Window) with Q&A
The Goldfish Sentiment: How to Confront a Fear of Academia
10:10 – 10:40 Mandi Beylefeld (Open Window) with Q&A
Healing Through Art
10:40 – 11:10 Roxy Do Rego (Open Window) with Q&A
Gender Dynamics in the SA Classroom: Teaching Power
11:10 – 11:30 BREAK for tea and snacks
11:30 – 12:00 Robyn Keet (Open Window) with Q&A
Ethical Links to AI and How to Use It
12:00 – 12:30 Laudette Sass and Armand Pretorius (Open Window) with Q&A
Briefing with Confidence: Fostering Double Literacy for Ethical and Critical AI Use in the Classroom
12:30 – 12:35 Formal Close of Talks Programme (Roxy Do Rego)
12:35 – 13:30 Lunch
SESSION 2:
Concept and Creation Inspiration
13:30 – 14:40 Practical workshops
14:30 – 15:00 Exquisite Corpse Exhibition: Networking with cheese and wine
SESSION 3: Workshops
13:40 – 14:40 Anni Kapp
Making with the MakerSpace: Super Sublimation Station
13:40 – 14:40 Jorina Botha & Lientjie Broodryk:
Beyond the MakerSpace: Cyanotype Exposure
13:40 – 14:40 Johann Smith & Lala Crafford:
Making with the MakerSpace: Tactile Illustration Workshop
13:40 – 14:40 Loraine Beaton & Arthur Zitha:
Characters in the body / Improvisation and Play
Meet our Speakers

Dr Jayne Crawshay-Hall Robertson
Academic Head (OW)
Welcome Address
Dr Jayne Crawshay-Hall (b. 1987), an academic, art historian, curator, and artist, is the Executive Academic Head for The Open Window. Crawshay-Hall has extensive experience in academic strategic leadership, academic organisational management and systems establishment, pedagogy, curriculum design, quality assurance, staff development and regulatory management – as well as how these portfolios influence business strategy and organisation economic health. A passion within this role is the mission to guide national knowledge on the potentials of creative career paths, and outline the economic need for creativity thinking across all sectors. She is committed to innovating and establishing strategic business partnerships and opportunities within the private education sector in South Africa.
Crawshay-Hall is the Presiding Chair of the Open Window Academic Board and Academic Committee, and is a member of OW EXCO. She is also a member of the Open Window University’s (Zambia) research unit, and through this, helped to design and establish a Masters degree programme at OWU. Currently she contributes as a member of the IMM Graduate School’s Academic Board (South Africa), is a member of the Belgium Campus Academic Board, and a member of the Commerce Edge Academic Advisory Board.
Besides her work for Open Window, she is also a researcher with particular interests in contextualising and curating (South) African and African Diaspora arts and visual cultures. She retains ongoing interests as an artist and curator through NO END Contemporary Art Space, an artist-run contemporary platform in Johannesburg, South Africa which she co-owns.

Sameer Rawjee
Founder: Life Design Movement (Google)
The Future of Creative Education in the AI Era
Sameer Rawjee is the founder of the Life Design Movement at Google, a programme for exploring purpose at work which has served over 10,000 Google employees globally, and has also been taught at INSEAD, Trinity College and the London Business School. Sameer is a serial venture builder via O School Ventures, where he partners with companies like Meta, Salesforce and TikTok to help young professionals prepare for new futures. He has been invited to speak at Standard Bank, ENS and Investec on how to be intelligent in a new world, and has shared his thoughts on the future of education and business with the Investec Private Wealth community across South Africa. Previously, Sameer started an EdTech venture to bring universities online. His work has been featured on CNN, in the Sunday Times and in Real Leaders magazine.

Dr Roxy Do Rego
Collections & Research Manager (OW)
Gender Dynamics in the SA Classroom: Teaching Power
Dr Roxy Do Rego is an artist, academic, educator, and feminist. She received her PhD in Art History through the University of Johannesburg in 2020, with focus on gender studies in post-apartheid South Africa. With twelve years’ experience in education across multiple institutions, she was formerly an Arts Education lecturer and Creative Arts and Design teacher until joining Open Window in 2024.
She is driven by generating research and knowledge in visual art and related fields through her career in academia. She has facilitated and led numerous public talks, conference panels, exhibition walkabouts and arts workshops. Her research interests lie in the intersect between femininity, gender as performance, and mythology, as represented in visual art particularly by female South African artists, and she regularly publishes articles investigating these topics.

Gontse Mathabathe
Head of Collection and Research Management (OW)
Host
Gontse Mathabathe is a designer, curator, researcher, and marketing strategist with over 13 years of experience in the creative arts sector. She is qualified with a Master’s degree in History of Art (Wits, 2020) and a Bachelors’ degree in Fine Art (Wits, 2016). She also holds a Digital Marketing Certificate (UCT, 2018).
Mathabathe has extensive experience in marketing and communications in the arts, through her tenures at the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA); Wits Art Museum (WAM); University of the Witwatersrand; Mma Hogany Clothing and; Assemblage. Currently, she is the Head of Collections & Research Management, as well as the Curator of NOW Gallery at Open Window.

Adriaan De La Rey
Lecturer: Film & TV / Cinematography (OW)
Drift and Duration: Reclaiming Time Through the Long Take
Adriaan De La Rey is an award-winning filmmaker, lecturer, and artist, passionate about exploring philosophical questions and visual poetics in filmmaking. For over ten years, he has made short films, documentaries, and curated programs for festivals including Stellenbosch Woordfees, AVIFF (Cannes), and the Absa KKNK.
His films, such as Raw/Rou, engage deeply with themes of resilience and identity, using the long take to reveal the often overlooked nuances of place and time within South Africa’s rural spaces. This approach is both poetic and theoretically grounded, engaging with time as a living force within the frame.
Currently, he lectures film and television at Open Window Stellenbosch, where he guides students in understanding both the theoretical and technical aspects of film. He encourages students to use film as a medium for personal expression and critical inquiry, helping them find their own voices in a local and global context.

Liam Rothballer
Lecturer: Academic Literacy
The Goldfish Sentiment: How to Confront a Fear of Academia
Liam is a lecturer operating in the Academic Literacy Unit at Open Window. They recently received an MA in History of Art from the North-West University, specialising in spatial design methodologies and environmental storytelling techniques prominently found in dystopian art and literature. Additional research interests include ruination, Romantic landscape traditions, and cross-cultural pragmatics.

Mandi Beylefeld
Counsellor
Healing Through Art
Mandi Beylefeld is a registered counsellor at the Open Window Stellenbosch campus, with a background in counselling (in high-trauma communities) and neurodiverse education. Her work is focused on individuals in educational settings, facilitating clients through their unique challenges that directly impact academic performance and well-being. Mandi has worked with numerous trauma survivors and facilitated small groups in schools through art. She is passionate about the dance between education and psychology to promote the mental health of our youth and improve educational settings in a holistic manner.

Robyn Keet
Lecturer: Creative Business Studies (OW)
Creativity & Profit: Thriving Without Sacrificing Your Art
Robyn Keet is an experienced creative business strategist and lecturer who is committed to helping creators build financially sustainable careers while preserving their artistic integrity. She serves as the Creative Administration and Creative Business Practice lecturer at Open Window and is the founder of Inner Voice Creative, a consultancy that empowers creators to turn their passions into profits.
Since 2019, Robyn has taught business development for creatives, offering practical industry insights and a growth-oriented approach to her teaching. With over 20 years of experience in the creative economy, she specializes in developing impactful curricula that foster entrepreneurial mindsets among emerging creators. Her innovative teaching methods prioritize real-world applications, utilizing practical frameworks that connect creative expression with financial viability.

Lala Crafford
Head of Department: Fundamentals (OW)
Neurodivergence and Creative Career Paths
Lala Crafford, a Pretoria-based artist, holds a BAFA from the University of Pretoria (2011) and a MADA in Interactive Media from the University of Witwatersrand (2017). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the ABSA Atelier and Sasol New Signatures top 100. During a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, she created an immersive Open Studio installation.
Crafford’s art was showcased at the 2019 Spier Light Art Festival. She has performed live improvised analogue visuals for events such as the 2022 Pendoring Awards, the iMPAC Moving Image Festival’s AV Jam Session, and the Mogale Festival of Poetry. She’s also collaborated with musicians like Vampire 9000, Fulka, and Half-Sister. Her recent solo exhibition, “NoWhere,” was held at Open Window in October 2023.
Since 2013, Crafford has been teaching at Open Window Centurion, where she currently serves as the Head of Department for Fundamentals. She has developed and instructed a wide range of courses from Visual Arts to Creative Development, bringing her extensive artistic and interactive media expertise to her teaching practice.

Morné Venter
Head of Department: Creative Technologies (OW)
Gaming Creativity: Using Roleplaying as a Creative Thinking Mechanic
Morné Venter is a creative thinker, artist, and educator currently residing in Pretoria. He completed his Masters degree in Information Design at the University of Pretoria in 2017. Venter is currently the Head of Department for Creative Technologies at Open Window where he has specialised in facilitating learning in Interaction and User Experience Design since 2013. Venter has a deep interest in using workshop design as a learning tool in the classroom and has developed expertise in designing interactive environments that enable teams and students to collaborate effectively toward common goals.

Armand Pretorius
Subject Manager: Interactive Development
Briefing with Confidence: Fostering Double Literacy for Ethical and Critical AI Use in the Classroom
Armand Pretorius is the Subject Manager for Interactive Development at The Open Window, where he has been teaching programming and guiding students through real-world coding projects since 2021. With a background in software development and curriculum design, he focuses on facilitating industry-relevant, project-based learning experiences. During his own studies, Armand started exploring AI technologies in his own portfolio, and over the past four years of teaching, he has streamlined the integration of these technologies into the classroom–from hands-on, AI-driven project briefs to investigating the role of large language models in coding workflows. His work explores the intersection of AI, student agency and critical thinking, contributing to the ongoing conversation around the use of AI in education.

Laudette Sass
Subject Manager: User Experience Design
Briefing with Confidence: Fostering Double Literacy for Ethical and Critical AI Use in the Classroom
Laudette Sass is a Subject Manager and Senior Lecturer in User Experience Design at Open Window. She is currently completing a PhD that explores how designers balance standardisation with maintaining distinctive brand identity online, drawing on Affordance Theory, Constraints Theory, and Visual Identity frameworks. Laudette is passionate about equipping students to navigate the evolving design landscape, with a strong focus on the ethical use of AI and developing briefs that integrate AI meaningfully into the design process. Alongside her research, she guides students through industry-focused projects to ensure they graduate with practical, real-world skills. Outside academia, Laudette enjoys exploring DIY crafts, which often inspire fresh ideas for creating innovative user experiences.

Chiedza Kehle
Lecturer: User Experience Design
Ice Breaker
Chiedza Kehle is a multi-disciplinary design educator with extensive experience in Multimedia, Communication, and User Experience Design. She has an MA in Visual Art Education, and her theoretical areas of interest are Critical Citizenship, Social Justice in AI, and Design Education. She lectures 3rd-year User Experience Design students and finds joy in seeing the pedagogical shift when her students start to feel industry-ready and begin to teach her new things.

Candice Edwards
Lecturer: Drawing and Research
Exploring Methods to Minimise Procrastination in Education
Candice Edwards is a full-time lecturer in Drawing and Research at the Open Window Institute. She holds a Masters (Summa Cum Laude) in Design, an honours in Information Design, and a Post-Grad in Higher education. In addition to having more than a decade’s worth of lecturing experience, she is also an exhibiting artist, is well-travelled, with an offbeat sense of humour, and wears black, a lot.
Meet our Workshop Facilitators

Anni Kapp
Maker Space Technician (OW)
Making with the MakerSpace: Super Sublimation Station
With nearly a decade’s experience in the industry, Anni Kapp is well-versed in the ins and outs of printing and signage, including operating a wide variety of print and manufacturing machines and finding the right material for every odd job presented to her. In 2024, Anni joined the team at Open Window Centurion as a MakerSpace technician, where she discovered her love for teaching the magic of “Making” to others – not only the institute’s students, but any curious individual! If she’s not busy tinkering with a machine or pushing it to its limits, you can find her organising and optimising every corner of the MakerSpace, bringing systematic precision to the chaotic creativity of her position.

Jorina Botha
Lecturer: Photography
Beyond the MakerSpace: Cyanotype Exposure
Jorina Botha is a photographer with over 25 years of experience, dedicated to capturing life through a lens and connecting with people through visual storytelling. With a Fine Arts degree and an Honours in Visual Communication, she brings both artistic depth and academic insight to her work. Botha is passionate about teaching and nurturing young creatives, and she has played a key role in reviving analogue photography on campus, establishing a darkroom and encouraging students to explore historical processes to deepen their creative thinking and practice.

Johann Smith
Lecturer: Illustration
Making with the MakerSpace: Tactile Illustration Workshop
As someone who always needs to have a pencil or paintbrush in his hand, Johann Smith had a lifelong obsession with the world of illustration. After graduating with an Honours Degree in Information Design from the University of Pretoria, Smith’s fascination with, and love for visual storytelling has pulled him into the South African illustration industry.
Where he has worked as a commercial freelancer. Beyond that he’s spent most of his waking time delving into and exploring imagined worlds and creations. He puts a lot of value in both the acquisition and proliferation of knowledge related to the art of visual communication, and as a result, over the last five years he’s made his home in the world of academia. This is where he hopes to pass on what he’s learned as well as what he loves to the following generations of young bright-minded illustrators.

Loraine Beaton
Lecturer: Screen Acting
Characters in the body / Improvisation and Play
Loraine Beaton has been running Screen Acting at Open Window since 2016. She holds an MA in Theatre Directing from Wits and completed her Honours in Directing and Contemporary Performance at Rhodes University. She has written and directed a number of plays, has travelled with them to The National Arts Festival, and currently enjoys making short films with the Open Window Screen Acting students. Her academic interest is in postdramatic directing and she is currently developing a puppet show for preschoolers.

Arthur Zitha
Lecturer: Screen and Creative Business
Characters in the body / Improvisation and Play
Arthur Bongani Zitha is a Wits University BADA (Bachelor of Dramatic Art) graduate, who majored in Playwriting and Acting. He also holds a Master’s (MA) Degree in Arts and Culture management. As a Performer, Zitha’s journey began with his acting training when he enrolled for Saturday acting classes at the Market Theatre in 2007. He was later granted a Wits scholarship to study acting at the Stella Adler Studio in New York (New York University, Tisch School of the Arts) in 2010. Zitha is also an award winning screenwriter who won a SAFTA for writing on the TV series titled Umlilo. He has further written on Ngempela (SABC 1) and Majakathatha (SABC 2).
Some of Zitha’s theatre credits include, The Merry Wives of Zuma directed by Peter Dirk Uys, Midsummer night’s dream directed by Greg Homann and Sophiatown directed by Malcolm Purkey. Some of his TV commercial credits include DSTV, Mobicell, Nando’s, Vodacom, Granpa, and Clientele. Some of Zitha’s television series credits include Ithuba Lokucgina, Zibondiwe, Sokhulu and Partners, and Ambitions. Some of his film credits include Pad Na Jou Hart, Hart to Get, Vaya, and The woods. Some of Zitha’s voice over credits include Brother Printers, Coca-Cola Zambia, and Wonga TV. Zitha has also been serving on the National Arts Council panel since 2018. He also lectured acting at the University of Pretoria and City Varsity Braamfontein from 2019 – 2024. Zitha is now a Screen and Creative Business lecturer at Open Window since 2025.