Searching for SA’s design mavens in the making!

Someone you know is the future of South Africa’s design industry – just waiting to be discovered! To help bring promising talent out into the spotlight, Design Indaba is once again issuing a Call for Entry for its annual Design Indaba Emerging Creatives Programme. Applications for the 2022 cycle of this prestigious talent search and support programme are now open!

Design Indaba’s longstanding and much-lauded Emerging Creatives Programme, which is supported by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, aims to unearth fresh local talent across a multitude of sectors. A chosen group of 40 young architects, fashion designers, illustrators, furniture designers, jewellers, graphic designers, filmmakers, and multi-disciplinary mavericks from across South Africa will have the sterling opportunity to showcase their work on the Design Indaba platform next year. The final selection will be made by two curators, fashion designers Lukhanyo Mdingi and Ditiro Mashigo – both are former Emerging Creatives themselves and well-placed to understand the needs of applicants and the programme itself.

The programme, founded in 2005, is one of the country’s longest running emerging talent support structures. It has helped launch celebrated and vibrant young designers such as Mpho Vackier, Laduma Ngxokolo, Katherine-Mary Pichulik, Neo Mahlangu, Andile Dyalvane, Russell Abrahams, Crystal Birch, Rich Mnisi  and Thebe Magugu, to name but a few of the superstars who have come through the programme. It acts as a career accelerator for its participants – identified as South Africa’s future generation of designers – by providing them with a platform, support, education, and mentorship.

“We founded the platform 16 years ago to help young creatives who have relatively little industry exposure. We have a strong belief in nurturing new creative talent and knocking down the barriers to entry for those just getting started!” says Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo.

While the format of the programme has gone wholly digital because of shifts caused by the pandemic, it still offers once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for participants in the form of newly expanded online workshops hosted by industry experts. Once a designer is selected as an Emerging Creative, they will be featured on the powerful designindaba.com platform and receive a year of prolonged national and international media exposure including online video, web articles and social media posts.

A world of exciting, career-enhancing opportunities awaits those who are selected to participate. Interested parties can apply to become a Design Indaba Emerging Creative via https://wjvxcog42lm.typeform.com/to/B8cdVxrW. Submissions close on 30 October 2021.

Visit www.designindaba.com for more information.