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06 November 2020 | Story Rulanzen Martin | Photo Supplied
Dr Tronél Hellberg, UFS alumna, completed her PhD in Music from the OSM in 2018.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has posed many challenges. Not only has it distrupted our normal way of life it but has created a ‘new normal.’ Even in these trying times, alumni from the University of the Free State (UFS) have adjusted to the new normal by going above and beyond to make it as normal as possible. 

One of these is Dr Tronél Hellberg, an alumna from the Odeion School of Music at the UFS, who has supported Grade 12 learners by presenting free online prescribed music theory classes. The classes are beneficial for learners following the CAPS or IEB curriculum. “I trust the online videos will assist learners and teachers to get through this challenging Grade 12 year,” says Dr Hellberg. She has recorded more than 38 live videos on her G-Sential Theory of Music Facebook page

The recordings are accessible to Grade 12 learners and their teachers at no cost. Dr Hellberg established the G-Sential Theory of Music in 2007 and has since published 20 theory of music books. 
 
Apart from assisting in teaching, one of her main objectives is to reach less fortunate learners who do not have access to music teachers. “Grade 12 music literacy requires an accumulative understanding of theory of music,” she says. With her initiative she also aims to “fill any gaps” to solidify knowledge and information which might still be unclear.

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Award-winning photographer exhibits ravages of war, 25 May 2016 until 17 June 2016
2016-06-02

Description: Unsettled exibition Tags: Unsettled exibition

The ruins of the Dimbaza Border Industrial Park built
in the 1970s as a source of cheap labour for industrialists
and ostensible employment for Ciskei Homeland citizens.
This industrial zone collapsed after 1994.
Photo: Images courtesy of the Galerie Seippel. 
All images © Cedric Nunn

Cedric Nunn’s latest photographic exhibition, Unsettled: One Hundred Years War of Resistance by Xhosa Against Boer and British, opened on 25 May 2016 at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery of University of the Free State, and will run until 17 June 2016. Since 2014, the exhibition has travelled through South Africa and the USA as well as Germany.

The photographer, documentary film-maker, and artist’s photographic journey was launched in the early 1980s in Durban. In 2011, he won the first FNB Joburg Art Fair Award.

Narratives of the victors and the vanquished

Unsettled deals with the nine wars that Xhosa people were subjected to between 1779 and 1879 in their fight against Afrikaner and British colonial settler forces. Nunn’s art seeks to instigate social change, and highlight lesser-seen aspects of society.

The work emanated from his awareness of a notable gap in the telling of this piece of South African history, as well as the fact that, to date, little has been done to memorialise these acts of colonial aggression and Xhosa resistance. He decided to document the land where these struggles took place.

“Through revisiting this painful past in the contemporary scenes of today, this work attempts to place the present in its factual context of dispossession and conquest,” said Nunn.

Unsettled
forms the first component of what will be a trilogy. The next component will address the legacy of colonial dispossession through “bringing ‘the first inhabitants’ back into the picture by giving a select number of self-describing Khoi, Griqua, and San or Bushmen a contemporary face and presence”. The final component will look at slavery.

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