The Vrystaat Arts Festival, the initiator of the Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE): Entangled, forges creative connections with Afrikaans, English and Sesotho cultures and other national and international creatives. Due to the outbreak of the world COVID -19 pandemic, the Vrystaat Arts Festival is taking most of its 2020 programme online.

The pandemic has not stopped the creative output of artists, and as a festival, we have a responsibility to provide platforms and safe spaces for creatives online through initiatives such as PACE Entangled.

Many of our international partners will be attending PACE Entangled as a precursor to the physical PACE planned for next year, which aims to increase the global reach of the interdisciplinary creative arts industries in Africa, to contribute to the development of future work from the continent. 

PACE Entangled would facilitate connections between the growing creative and cultural industries in Africa and international partners worldwide, to reinforce a world class, online business-to-business event that reflects the wider, global cultural significance of the creativity of Africa.

In the coming months we will give our confirmed artists opportunities to promote their work to a large international market. 

The artists from Africa and the diaspora, selected by an international panel of experts, are of cultural significance to the international arts sector. It is our hope that having these artists present work under the PACE Entangled platform will ensure that their work reaches international festival directors, cultural agencies, cultural attachés and arts programmers.

This will increase their regional and international profiles, touring and business potential and widen the reach of local art sectors after this pandemic is over.