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17 July 2020 | Story Nitha Ramnath | Photo iStock
The UFS initiated a new community engagement programme to help communities take charge of their lives.
The University of the Free State (UFS) is launching a new community engagement programme to help communities take charge of their lives during and after the national lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The E-Community Engagement Programme will run for the duration of the lockdown to ensure that the UFS continues to serve all people. This programme is one of more than 120 community development programmes and projects that the UFS is involved with this year.

Rev Billyboy Ramahlele, Director: Community Engagement, says this strategy is the result of the Institutional Transformation Plan, which seeks to deepen the university’s commitment towards the betterment of our communities by creating sustainable partnerships for development. “This programme is dedicated to assisting communities to take charge of their lives during and after this pandemic and will focus on sustainable livelihoods and family support”, he says.

With these community development programmes and projects, about 3 000 UFS students spend at least 127 000 hours per year engaging in 73 service-learning modules. This excludes the clinical work done by our medical and education students in the community through community-based education and inter-professional learning. The university’s 22 student volunteer associations play an important role in community development projects. Our academics and researchers contribute their intellectual resources through their involvement, teaching, and research in different aspects of community life.

The E-Community Engagement Programme refers to an alternative online/virtual community engagement platform aimed at facilitating continuously negotiated collaborations and partnerships between the UFS and the interest groups that it interacts with, aimed at building and exchanging the knowledge, skills, expertise, and resources required to develop and sustain society. Such alternative engagement stems from adapting physical face-to-face (f2f) community engagement to an e-environment. As a result of the uncertain state of restricted f2f engagement during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus of participation, dialogue, engaged learning, and teaching by university staff and students is on citizens actively participating in the development of their own lives and that of their surrounding communities.

Details of the E-Community Engagement Programme will soon be published on the UFS website, and will be presented on radio and online in partnership with Motheo FM, Mosupatsela FM, Kovsie FM, Mangaung Municipality, Towers of Hope, Princess Gabo Foundation, Rock Foundation, Bloemshelter, and all our faculties.


News Archive

UFS arts are experiencing a boom
2013-09-03

 
Dot Vermeulen
3 September 2013

The arts at the University of the Free State are experiencing a boom, with several Kovsie artists achieving on a national platform. Dot Vermeulen, a junior lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts, is the latest UFS artist to be honoured nationally as the winner of the 2013 Sasol New Signatures art award. 

The award is rewarding emerging young artists. The winning entry, entitled “Desperately disciplined,” by Vermeulen, who is currently studying toward her master’s degree in Visual Arts, was chosen from approximately 400 entries. 

Earlier this year, Pauline Gutter, a former Kovsie, won the Absa L’Atelier competition, which is South Africa’s most prestigious art competition. The year before, another former student from our Department of Fine Arts, Elrie Joubert, won the competition. 

Vermeulen says there are brilliant people at the UFS who are active in visual arts at various levels. "People such as Janine Allen-Spies (lecturer in painting) and Angela de Jesus (curator of the Stegmann gallery) are not only good artists, they are also involved with the community and invest a great deal of energy into the development of young artists. From my own experience, I can say that I have benefited a lot from academic scholarships from the UFS in the course of my study career." 

She says her winning entry refers to the relationship between traditional tactile painting and contemporary digital media. "The focus is especially on hidden moments of absorption and correspondence during the art-making process. The painting installation depicts a reading nude figure on a couch. A computer screen is mounted on a stand in front of the painting, animating the same image, while at the same time blocking the view of the painting. In the animation, the nude figure pages through her book from time to time, with the paint and digital drawing marks moving around her. The text “Envoi is typing…” is also animated on the surface of the couch repeatedly. It is suggestive of internet chat boxes, which often pop up on the screen while I am working on my laptop." 

As winner of the Sasol New Signatures art award, Vermeulen won R60 000 and the opportunity of a solo art exhibition in the Pretoria Art Museum. 

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