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After South Africa’s battle with the record-breaking drought of 2015, Prof Andries Jordaan from our Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa(DiMTEC) saw room for improvement in dealing with this kind of disaster.
Drought impact
Commercial farmers who are usually net exporters of food crops and communal farmers who own the bulk of the country’s livestock, were all hit hard in 2015. Most of the latter had no resources to spare as the drought progressed. The concern about the drought’s impact on the country’s food production and availability resulted in a joint goal of preventing food scarcity during future droughts.
Prof Jordaan’s visit to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the US, several years ago prepared him to better equip communities in South Africa to deal with drought situations. “I recognised that in spite of the impact DiMTEC has been able to make on disaster preparedness, a gap remained in disaster response in South Africa.”
Sharing knowledge
In August this year Prof Jordaan again visited the NDMC. This time he requested a few key players in South Africa’s agriculture and disaster response communities to join him. With him were Janse Rabie, head of Natural Resources at AgriSA, a nonprofit organisation that functions as an interface between the government and about 28 000 South Africa farmers, and Moses Musiwale Khangale, director of Fire Services for the South African Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
The South African delegation met with and learnt from climatologists, geospatial technologists, and outreach and planning analysts.
Art2 + x [science] = 2 continents fused
2014-04-02
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Left: Diamandini by Dr Mari Velonaki. Right: 'Muslim Hairdrying' by Cigdem Aydemir.
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Mzanzi resistance art is set to fuse with Australian interdisciplinary art in an experimental ‘boiling pot’ – right here on our Bloemfontein Campus.
Program for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD)
Kovsies and the Vryfees forged a highly-innovative link between South African and Australian artists by establishing the Program for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD). Together we are embarking on a three-year collaboration to see what happens when experimental and community arts are fused.
The project includes intercultural laboratories, art and science exchange programmes, public forums as well developing and presenting experimental art.
Art(ist)s meet science(tists)
For the first time, two Australian artists will visit our Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences in an exchange programme. The one is Dr Mari Velonaki, director of the Creative Robotics Lab at the University of New South Wales. The other is Dr Nigel Helyer, an honorary research fellow at the SymbioticA biotechnology lab at the University of Western Australia.
Dr Velonaki will explore new links between humans and computers that are community orientated. She will work closely with Prof PJ Blignaut and the Department of Computer Science and Informatics. In turn, Dr Helyer will investigate genetic coding and intercultural musical compositions. He will collaborate with Prof J Albertyn at the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology.
Vryfees 2014 and 2015 will also see contemporary and highly-experimental works from renowned Australian artists Cigdem Aydemir and Jess Olivieri. In addition, the festival will present OPENLab – a new national laboratory for early and midcareer artists and creative practitioners interested in making art in the public realm.
The programme is the result of a close partnership between the Vryfees and Situate Art in Festivals, managed by Salamanca Arts Centre in Australia (www.situate.org.au).
It also enjoys the support of:
- Australia Council for the Arts;
- NSW Artists Grant Scheme administrated by the National Association of the Visual Arts LTD;
- Situate Art in Festivals;
- National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and
- Modern Art Project SA.
For more information on Piad visit www.vryfees.co.za or https://www.facebook.com/pages/PikoPiad/1435158293383474.