Readers are invited to the launch of the Social Impact Arts Prize Fellowship 2026 at the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch on 13 December 2025. The Fellowship, supported by the Rupert Art Foundation and the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch, invites artistic proposals that engage with, reflect on and kickstart social change from the South African creative community. This includes artists, architects, designers, makers, and, for the first time, writers.
Alternating between Stellenbosch and Graaff-Reinet on a bi-annual basis, the
upcoming third edition of the Fellowship is situated in the Karoo’s Valley of
Desolation. It will provide grant funding to practitioners from a range of
disciplines to develop an artistic project grounded in impactful, meaningful
ideas. They will be financially supported to develop work over a sustained
period while residing in Graaff-Reinet.
“Social impact is inherently based on a beneficial change in relational
dynamics,” explains SIAP Director, Roelof van Wyk, “on the strengthening and
enrichment of ties between people, and within the more-than-human world. We
aim to select a diverse and yet aligned set of impactful projects that bring
generative insights to an expanded notion of the social.”
“Graaff-Reinet has been selected as the site for several reasons,” adds Hanneli
Rupert-Elias, Chairperson of SIAP. “It was the birthplace of my grandfather
Anton Rupert, who, alongside my grandmother Huberte, first established the
Rupert Art Foundation, which supports our work here. He was a broad thinker
who drew inspiration from the stillness and wisdom of Nature. What better
place to host an artistic fellowship than in the unique and ancient landscape
that Graaff-Reinet has to offer – which already attracts leading
palaeontologists, environmentalists and tourists from around the globe, and
which will hopefully act as an omnipresent reminder of humans’ place in the
world, and a set a stage for our fellows to converge and forge new paths
forward.”
As an initiative of the Rupert Museum, the SIAP Fellowship seeks to rethink
public access to the arts and the possibility that artworks from disparate
traditions could coexist, interact, and transform one another, producing
encounters that disturb fixed narratives while allowing new ones to emerge.
This relational articulation is relevant to both the award’s social emphasis and
its geographic location in Graaff-Reinet, halfway between Cape Town and
Johannesburg.
Click here to RSVP for the Launch at the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch on 13
December 2025.