ARISE, a place-based, art-led education project at Ikhaya Primary School in Kayamandi, is responding to the lasting educational and spatial inequalities created by apartheid in Stellenbosch.

The project creates a visible and symbolic connection between a historically excluded community and Stellenbosch University (SU). Learners shape ceramic hands that are transformed into birds – symbols of belonging, aspiration and possibility. Grounded in the idea of education and art as a form of repair, the initiative goes beyond the classroom. Through making, planting, designing and caring for shared spaces, children develop responsibility, dignity, confidence and a sense of collective belonging.

ARISE shows how a university and its neighbouring community can move beyond outreach toward genuine partnership and repair, helping children see themselves not as outside the town’s future, but as part of it.

The project, led by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at SU, is a collaboration with Ikhaya Primary School, the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ), the Kayamandi Arts Community and the Stellenbosch Academy of Photography and Design.

View the video below: