08:30-9:00  Registration and Tea

09:00-09:05  Welcome address by Dr Jayne Crawshay-Hall Robertson
(OW Academic Head)

09:05-09:10  Welcome address by Dr Francois Jonker
(CTCA Academic Head)

09:10-09:20  Welcome by Gontse Mathabathe
(OW Research and Collections Department)

Introduction to the OW Teacher’s Portal

09:20-09:50  Keynote Address by Prof Alison Kearney with Q&A

09:50-10:00  Tea and Change of Venue for the start of Panel Sessions

PANEL 1A: CO-CREATION AS EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY
Chaired by Roxy Do Rego

10:00-10:30 Morne Venter (Open Window) with Q&A
Co-Creating Classrooms for Humans: Productive Friction for Meaningful Pay-off

10:30-11:00 Darius Botha (Open Window) with Q&A
The Educator as Dungeon Master: Co-Authoring Learning Through Systems, Play, and Emergence

11:00-11:30 Francois Jonker (Cape Town Creative Academy) with Q&A
Sketching out ‘Study’ as a Co-Creative Practice

11:30-12:00 Desré Barnard (Cape Town Creative Academy) with Q&A
Research-Driven Product Design: Co-Creating Theory-Practice Integration in Interaction Design Education

12:00-12:45 Lunch Break

PANEL 1B: CO-CREATION WITH AI
Chaired by Gontse Mathabathe

10:00-10:30 Robyn Keet (Open Window) with Q&A
Ethical Links to AI and How to Use It

10:30-11:00 Larita Engelbrecht (Cape Town Creative Academy) with Q&A
Co-Creating with AI: Exercising the Ethical Use of GenAI in Research and Writing 

11:00-11:30 Stephan Calitz (Open Window) with Q&A
Preserving Creative Agency in AI-Assisted South African Game Development

11:30-12:00 Deon Opperman (Open Window) with Q&A
From Policing to Partnering: Strategies for Integrating Generative AI Into University Classrooms

12:00-12:45 Lunch Break

PANEL 2A: LEARNER-CENTERED APPROACHES TO EDUCATION AND WELL-BEING
Chaired by Theo Sonnekus

12:45-13:15 Candice Edwards (Open Window) with Q&A
Co-crastination (Together Tomorrow)

13:15-13:45 Liam Rothballer (Open Window) with Q&A
The Goldfish Sentiment: Pedagogy Embracing Failure

13:45-14:15 Roxy Do Rego (Open Window) with Q&A
Learner Voices in the SA Classroom: Teaching Gender and Power

14:15-14:45 Uné Conradie (Spieel Collective) with Q&A
Co-Creating Safety: Trauma-Informed Classrooms in Contexts of Historic, Structural and Interpersonal Violence

14:45-15:15 Llandi Beeslaar (Open Window) with Q&A
Facilitating Failure: Re-centering the Creative Process & Critical Thinking to Inspire Resilience in Creative Arts Learners

PANEL 2B: CO-CREATION IN ARTMAKING/CREATIVE PRACTICE
Chaired by Francois Jonker

12:45-13:15 Hougaard Winterbach (Open Window) with Q&A
Co-Creation with the Past: Visual Literacy and the Power of the Image

13:15-13:45 Diane Brand Maris (Alive with the Arts) with Q&A
Conversations With Colour: Creative Expression Beyond Words

13:45-14:15 Robyn Keet (Open Window) with Q&A
Creativity and Operational Logic

14:15-14:45 Julia Rosa Clark (Cape Town Creative Academy) with Q&A
Sharing, Hearing and Caring: Feedback Methodologies in the Contemporary Art Degree 

14:45-15:15 Nande Hattingh (Heartfelt Creative Agency) with Q&A
Rewilding Creativity: Flow and Embodied Intuition through the Transcendental Sublime in Nature

15:30-16:30 WORKSHOP PROGRAMME:
CONCEPT AND CREATION COLLABORATION

Hougaard Winterback (Open Window)
Drawing the Past into the Present Workshop

Llandi Beeslaar (Open Window)
The Power of Productive Failure Workshop

Callum Sutherland (Open Window)
Sublimation Station 

Annabel Nyongwana (Stellenbosch University)
Writing and Counter-Storytelling Workshop

Larita Engelbrecht (Cape Town Creative Academy)
Basic Bookbinding Workshop

Syd Strydom (Cape Town Creative Academy)
Cyanotype Workshop

16:30-17:00 Exhibition
Cheese & Wine networking at the end of the day.

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 organisational 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.

Dr Francois Jonker
Academic Head (CTCA)
Welcome Address
Sketching out ‘Study’ as a Co-Creative Practice

Dr Francois Jonker is a co-founder and the academic head of the Cape Town Creative Academy and a research associate of the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University. His research is concerned with challenging normative tendencies in higher education research, pedagogies, and assessment. He holds a joint doctorate from the University of the Western Cape and Utrecht University.

Prof Alison Kearney 
Keynote Address

Prof Alison Kearney is a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) C2-rated artist-scholar, currently employed as Associate Professor of Art History and Theory in the University of Johannesburg’s Division of Visual Arts within the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture.
With over 20 years of experience in academia, Prof Kearney is committed to transforming research and pedagogy by exploring and developing methods of creating and sharing knowledge that foreground creativity, making, inclusion, divergent thinking, and working together for social justice for all. Through teaching, research, and artmaking, Prof Kearney proposes unorthodox ways of doing, thinking, and making that make use of experiential, ludic, arts-based pedagogies to stimulate curiosity and critical thinking amongst students. To connect with communities of scholars who share an interest in developing transformative arts-based teaching and learning practices, Prof Kearney co-founded the cross-disciplinary, Transformative Research in Practice (TRIP) Project with Dr Louis Botha and Dr Zaheera Jina- Asvat in 2022.
See Prof Kearney’s artworks and writing online: www.alisonkearney.co.za
On Instagram @the_museum_under_erasure
For more on the TRIP Project, online: www.tripproject.co.za
On Instagram @tripproject_za

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.

Dr Roxy Do Rego
Collections & Research Manager (OW) | Host
Learner Voices in the SA Classroom: Teaching Gender and 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 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, mythology, and politics of desire as represented in visual art particularly by female artists, and she regularly publishes articles investigating these topics.

Morné Venter
Head of Department: Creative Technologies (OW)
Co-Creating Classrooms for Humans: Productive Friction for Meaningful Pay-off

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.

Darius Botha
3D and Motion Design Lecturer (OW)
The Educator as Dungeon Master: Co-Authoring Learning Through Systems, Play, and Emergence

Darius Botha is a 3D animation lecturer and freelance multimedia designer whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, technology, and design. With a background in motion design, title sequences, and graphic design, he focuses on helping students move beyond software proficiency toward creative authorship and industry-ready thinking.

Desré Barnard
Course Coordinator: Research Practice (CTCA)
Research-Driven Product Design: Co-Creating Theory-Practice Integration in Interaction Design Education

Desré Barnard has taught in higher education for more than a decade across a range of public and private institutions. They teach modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, spanning Visual Cultural Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, Feminism, Posthumanism, Philosophy, Research Practice, and related fields. Barnard’s commitment to theory and critique encourages students to engage thoughtfully with the complexities of contemporary culture and its unfolding futures. Their current research focuses on the ethical deployment of generative AI, its implications for the creative sector, and how it can be meaningfully integrated into learning and teaching to better prepare students for a rapidly changing field.

Robyn Keet
Lecturer: Creative Business Studies (OW)
Ethical Links to AI and How to Use It | Creativity and Operational Logic

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 specialises in developing impactful curricula that foster entrepreneurial mindsets among emerging creators. Her innovative teaching methods prioritise real-world applications, utilising practical frameworks that connect creative expression with financial viability.

Larita Engelbrecht
Senior Lecturer: Contextual Studies (CTCA)
Co-Creating with AI: Exercising the Ethical Use of GenAI in Research and Writing

Larita Engelbrecht is a senior lecturer in Contextual Studies at Cape Town Creative Academy. In addition to teaching art history and critical theory courses, she is also a practising artist specialising in painting and collage. Engelbrecht received both a BA in Fine Arts (2009) and a MA in Visual Art (2012) (cum laude) at the University of Stellenbosch. In 2012, she was invited to an artist residency programme at a new media gallery in Finland. In addition to solo shows, her work has been selected in a number of group exhibitions and art competitions in South Africa, as well as for a travelling international exhibition, Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design. 

Stephan Calitz
Head of School: Animation Arts (OW)
Preserving Creative Agency in AI-Assisted South African Game Development

Stephan Cornelius Calitz (b. 1982) is an academic leader, animator, and game designer currently serving as the Head of School: Animation Arts at The Open Window. With over two decades of experience in the creative industries, his work focuses on curriculum development, academic strategy, and the integration of emerging technologies in film and animation arts. Calitz has led production for high-profile broadcast and commercial projects, including animated series and award-winning short films. His recent work includes the development of Virtual Window, an educational MMORPG and 2023 MTN App of the Year finalist. A SAFTA winner and Loeries-ranked top lecturer, he holds a BA Honours in Visual Communication and is a Master of Arts candidate.

Deon Opperman
Subject Manager: Business Management for Creative Practitioners, Lecturer: Screenwriting (OW)
From Policing to Partnering: Strategies for Integrating Generative AI Into University Classrooms

Deon Opperman is a writer, director, and producer whose career spans over 40 years in the South African entertainment industry. His television productions have received both ATKV Mediaveertjie and SAFTA awards for Best Production and Best Script.

His work as a playwright has twice received the Hertzog Prize for Literature (Drama), the highest Afrikaans literary prize in South Africa, awarded by the South African Academy of Science and Art. He holds a Master of Arts in Film and Television from Northwestern University, Chicago, and a Master of Business Administration from the Wits University School of Business.

Opperman was one of the three founding partners of the film and theatre school, AFDA, and currently occupies the position of Subject Manager: Business Management for Creative Practitioners, and Lecturer: Screenwriting at the Open Window Institute.

Candice Edwards
Lecturer: Drawing and Research (OW)
Co-crastination (Together Tomorrow)

Candice Edwards is a multifaceted visual artist and designer who dabbles in a host of mixed mediums ranging from assemblage, ink, charcoal, digital design, and more recently, she has started tattooing. Edwards holds a Masters (Summa Cum Laude) in Design, an honours in Information Design, and a Post-Grad in Higher Education. She has more than a decade’s worth of lecturing experience, and has also served her time in industry working for brands such as KFC, Standard Bank, and the Jaguar/Land Rover group. She is an exhibiting artist, who speaks broken French, is well travelled, has a weird fascination with teaspoons, and wears a lot of black.

Liam Rothballer
Lecturer: Theory (OW)
The Goldfish Sentiment: Pedagogy Embracing Failure

Liam Rothballer is a theory lecturer operating in the Fundamentals department at Open Window, focusing on training students in ways to engage with their own practice and artistic mediums more critically. Having received an MA in History of Art from the North-West University, they have experience operating in various Academic Literacy and student-facing support roles for the better part of the last decade. Personal research interests include diegetic levels in storytelling, ruination, Romantic landscape painting traditions, and cross-cultural pragmatics.

Uné Conradie
Spieel Collective
Co-Creating Safety: Trauma-Informed Classrooms in Contexts of Historic, Structural and Interpersonal Violence

Uné Conradie completed an MPhil in Health Humanities and the Arts. She is the co-director of Sp(i)eel Arts Therapies Collective, a South African non-profit comprised of HPCSA-registered arts therapists, arts counsellors, and applied arts practitioners. For over two decades, she has developed and facilitated arts-based, trauma-informed programmes in schools, rural communities, and government institutions. Her work centres on embodied knowledge, co-created safety, and collective health.

Hougaard Winterbach
Senior Lecturer: Drawing (OW)
Co-Creation with the Past: Visual Literacy and the Power of the Image

Hougaard Winterbach has spent around 10 years in the industry as a graphic and web designer. At The Open Window Institute, he has specialised in course design, research methodology, and research supervision. He has also lectured in the history of art and design, sequential narrative (comics), as well as drawing, illustration, and visual art. He has, to date, spent around 24 years teaching art at the tertiary level.

Currently, he is a senior lecturer in Drawing at Open Window (Stellenbosch), and is pursuing a career as a practicing artist. He has travelled widely in America and Europe. He has had two solo exhibitions and has exhibited in jewellery design, drawing, and sculpture. Other than teaching full time, he is continually involved in making art. His main modes of artistic expression are drawing, jewellery design, and sculpture (bronze). His website can be viewed at www.hougaardwinterbach.com.

Diane Brand Maris
Alive with the Arts
Conversations with Colour: Creative Expression Beyond Words

Diane Maris has been working with the transformative power of the creative arts for over 35 years. She uses Colour Dialogue, MARI ® (Mandala Assessment Research Instrument), and BMGIM (The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music) as tools for the endeavours of Life Towards Balance.

Her work underpins the importance of exploring and expressing through creativity, and how it serves to grow and empower the individual, both for self-development, as well as in relationship with others. Maris incorporates process art techniques for this purpose, adding energy medicine as a support in personal development and meaning making. She is a regular presenter at international conferences, and she teaches MARI and Colour Dialogue to individuals and groups in a variety of settings. She works internationally, offering courses and sessions, both in-person and online, for individuals and groups of all ages.

Llandi Beeslaar
Lecturer: Screen Acting and Production Design (OW)
Facilitating Failure: Re-centering the Creative Process & Critical Thinking to Inspire Resilience in Creative Arts Learners

Llandi Beeslaar studied Drama at both the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University. She completed her Honours degree cum laude in the Drama Department at Stellenbosch University and is currently conducting research towards her Master’s degree on the Aesthetics of Failure in Performance. She spent the last five years teaching Live Performance as well as Critical Thinking and Writing at AFDA, and joined the Open Window team as a Screen Acting Lecturer in 2024. She has more than 11 years of industry-relevant experience, ranging from work in production, art department, directing, writing, and acting. 

Julia Rosa Clark
Programme Coordinator and Lecturer: Contemporary Art (CTCA)
Sharing, Hearing and Caring: Feedback Methodologies in the Contemporary Art Degree

Julia Rosa Clark (born 1975) is the Programme Coordinator and a Lecturer in the Contemporary Art Degree and Honours Programmes. She has been a teacher, practicing artist, and designer in Cape Town for many decades, exhibiting work in solo exhibitions and group shows and has taught on primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Her art practice primarily investigates installation, but also includes collage, assemblage, sculpture, and performance. It often involves the collection and processing of large collections of information, images, or objects . 

Callum Sutherland
MakerSpace Technician (OW)
Sublimation Station

Callum Sutherland is an illustrator and creative practitioner with an Honours degree in Visual Communication, specialising in Illustration, from The Open Window Institute. She currently serves as the MakerSpace Technician at the Open Window Institute Johannesburg campus, where she works at the intersection of creativity, design, and physical fabrication.

Her work is centred on transforming two-dimensional ideas into tangible objects through processes such as sublimation printing, 3D printing, and sculpting. She is particularly passionate about guiding ideas from concept to physical form, and finds great fulfilment in seeing designs evolve from sketches or digital files into real-world creations.

Annabel Nyongwana
Stellenbosch University
Writing and Counter-Storytelling Workshop

Annabel Nyongwana is a master’s student at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVeRQ) at Stellenbosch University. Her academic work focuses on literary representations of African genocides. She has a passion for developing students, creative voices, and poetry through her work with a small writers’ group at the Wits Reading and Writing Centre and the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP).

Syd Strydom
Coordinator of Teaching and Learning (CTCA)
Cyanotype Workshop

Syd Strydom is the Coordinator of teaching and learning at CTCA and holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts (Education) from Stellenbosch University. 

Nande Hattingh
Founder: Heartfelt Creative Agency
Rewilding Creativity: Flow and Embodied Intuition through the Transcendental Sublime in Nature

Nande Nakai Hattingh is a South African visual artist, designer, and founder of Heartfelt Creative Agency. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Arts from The Open Window School of Visual Communication, where her research explored intuitive creativity, immersive natural environments, and embodied states of flow. Her practice integrates graphic design, illustration, and symbolic visual storytelling.

Her professional experience spans a wide range of creative industries, including participation in the design development of South Africa’s new R1 coin, textile design for esteemed national fashion designers, and multiple solo exhibitions. She also facilitates creative workshops and works across branding, packaging design, editorial layout, and visual communication.

Inspired by South Africa’s landscapes and her engagement with movement practices such as trail running, cycling, swimming, and dance, her work translates lived sensory experience into visual form. Nande’s approach is rooted in the belief that creativity is an intuitive, embodied process that connects deeply to place, memory, and meaning.

Sublimation Station

Join this hands-on workshop and you’ll learn the basics of sublimation by designing your own coaster to take home. See how a 2D design is transferred onto a coaster to create a finished, personalised product, and learn about the many other objects that sublimation can be used to customise.

Drawing the Past into the Present Workshop

This drawing workshop is focused on interpretation and experimentation. Participants will be supplied with art historical images spanning from the Renaissance to pulp art to interpret in their own personal visual ‘language’. Participants will co-create with the past to make new images by referring to older ones. Materials and approaches applied will include pencil, coloured pencil, fine liner, and collage.

Basic Bookbinding Workshop

Basic bookbinding is a valuable skill for any art and design educator. This workshop introduces the Japanese stab binding method for binding sheets of paper into books, art journals, or portfolios. 

Cyanotype Workshop

This workshop includes an introduction to the alternative art of cyanotype printing. A demonstration of how to expose, wash, and dry a cyanotype print will be provided. Participants will gather natural materials such as leaves, flowers, or twigs, or choose from a mystery box of items supplied by the facilitator to create their prints. Participants will expose their individual prints and potentially co-create or collaborate by creating a group collage.

The Power of Productive Failure Workshop

This workshop encourages you to reflect on your leadership style and to identify the obstacles that limit your effectiveness in the classroom. It serves as a practical extension of the conference paper Facilitating Failure: Re-centring the Creative Process & Critical Thinking to Inspire Resilience in Creative Arts Learners. While aimed at teachers, this workshop is open to anyone who wants to challenge themselves and refocus their energy to perform at their best. In this workshop, you will learn: How to ask QUESTIONS OF VALUE to trigger Critical Thinking in your learners, how to CHALLENGE THE BELIEFS that keep you in a fixed mindset and move towards a growth mindset that Cultivate Resilience, and understanding the POWER OF HABIT when interacting with learners and getting them to engage and value the Creative Process.

Writing and Counter-Storytelling Workshop

This workshop aims to practically introduce participants to the practice of writing groups and counter storytelling by instructing participants to engage creatively with a set of prompts as students would in an actual writing group:

1. All the things we cannot see
This prompt aims to challenge participants to reorient their gaze to the periphery, the shadows just out of view.

2. “The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream”-Joan Didion.
This prompt will enable participants to take ideas for transformation seriously in their own communities that seem to be the stuff of frivolous dreams.