The Vrystaat Arts Festival • Tsa-Botjhaba is an Afrikaans language festival that forges creative connections with English and Sotho cultures. We contribute to the exchange of ideas around arts, culture and society through connections with other national and international creative communities. The festival takes place at the Bloemfontein campus of the University of the Free State which is made available for the duration of the festival.

The Pan-African Telematic Art Project (PATAP) is a new initiative of the Vrystaat Arts Festival through the Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE), in partnership with the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival, Ars Electronica, and the University of the Free State’s Program for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD). The PATAP selected 2 projects from it’s first call for applications. These 2 projects are “my many mouths” by the mmm collective (Lindiwe Matshikiza, Noluthando Lobese, Vanessa Lorenzo and Nicola Pilkington) and “deus::ex::machina” by Louise Coetzer, and they both received funding to experiment with new, interactive media arts projects, dealing with issues relevant to the continent. To date, the artists working on these projects have been part of Pan African Creative Exchange (PACE) - Entangled, Ars Electronica and the Vrystaat Kunstefees Sneelstrom.

PATAP partners: Pan-African Creative Exchange ; University of the Free State ; Program for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD) ; Fak'ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival ; Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa ; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Supported through:
University of the Free State,
Program for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD)
Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation