Editors: Roxy Do Rego and Gontse Mathabathe
Authors: Lala Crafford, Roxy Do Rego, Candice Edwards, Robyn Keet, Laudette Sass, Morné Venter

The Open Window 2025 Teacher’s Conference sought 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 provided a platform for knowledge-sharing, practical workshops, and discussions that addressed challenges and opportunities in art education.

The programme of Breaking Barriers to Creative Learning explored how we as educators can make the art and design curriculum more relevant to diverse learners within a local context. Whether we lecture future creative practitioners or 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 offered 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.

This publication, our first issue of The Open Arts Journal, emanates from these proceedings.