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Introducing the GPS jury 2025

GPS jury 2024 © Goethe-Institut

This year’s GPS jury, namely researcher Siphokazi Tau, consultant and project manager Musonda Chimba, and curator Uthando Baduza, would like to extend their gratitude to all GPS applicants who have put great labour and care into their GPS project proposals. The task of choosing three outstanding proposals to be funded within the GPS programme wasn’t an easy one.

Jury statement 2025

The jury found that the proposals, on an artistic level, demonstrated an appealing mix of grounded experience and bold new voices which made it challenging for the jury to arrive at their decision. The three chosen projects prioritize marginalized histories and endangered cultural practices. All of them speak to how technology and contemporary practice can be a vehicle for archiving and to help capturing these marginalized stories. The selected projects show a good relationship between past/present/future, and strongly centre the community in the conceptualization and the making of the project, which is vital for a GPS project.

With their selection, the jury also prioritised projects that demonstrate potential for sustainable impact. The three projects recognize the significance of the physical and cultural space where they are embedded and appreciate the richness of these spaces as reservoirs of cultural knowledge.

On a broader scale, the jury would like to make the following comments on the received project proposals:

This year, the Goethe-Institut received a high number of arts education proposals which speaks to a vital need articulated by the arts community in their respective locations. The jury appreciates that practitioners are working hard at this crucial grassroots level in order to provide access to the arts for the most marginalized in our communities, and to lay the foundation for growing our future generations.

Some proposals demonstrated a lack of connection and clear links and/or partnerships rooted in the respective community (especially in the case of project ideas that foreground personal (hi)stories and personal artistic journeys). Many projects showed great experimental value, but often their outlined project plans didn’t clearly articulate their means of realization.

The jury positively acknowledges the rich diversity of proposals in terms of themes – spanning from those foregrounding heritage and indigenous practices to those that use AI technologies.

Upon this basis, the jury would like to make the following recommendations:

Future GPS proposals should demonstrate more clearly how they intend to connect to the community where the project is envisioned to take place. They ideally should show rootedness within, and partnership with those communities. It is fundamental for a GPS proposal to outline how the community can benefit from the project.

Confirmed partnerships upon submission of the project proposal are vital, so is clarity with regards to the project implementation. A solid project plan is essential.
Ideally, the proposals should articulate more clearly what the significance of the space is for their respective project.

Introducing the GPS jury 2025

  • Siphokazi Tau

    Siphokazi Tau is an independent researcher and consultant working on African feminisms and African women leadership in the higher education landscape. She is a research coordinator for the Encyclopaedia of African Feminism hosted at the University of Johannesburg. She writes and does research on the themes of gender and power, African women leadership in universities, memory and institutions, and expressions of femininity in South African music. She has lectured on Ijeruka - a pan-Africanist education space, reading Makeba, Fassie and Gqulu's work to examine how art serves not only as a reflection of society that unveils the distortive lens through which African women's stories have been told, but also offers a vibrant canvas for redefining African womanhood.

  • Musonda Loncwala Chimba

    With a research Masters degree in Popular Music studies, Musonda Loncwala Chimba is a consultant in the creative industries. She is an accredited Prince2 Project manager with extensive experience in research, programme development, artists rights, capacity building and policy development across Africa as exemplified in her work as the General Manager of Arterial Network. She coordinated the 2012 MTN Bushfire Festival, Eswatini’s International Festival of the Arts. Under the Durban Film Office, She was the Project coordinator and a member of the founding Steering Committees for the Durban FilmMart and KZN Music Industry Association (KUMISA). She has twice served on the board of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM).

  • Uthando Baduza

    Uthando Baduza holds a Bachelor of Arts (Political Studies) (UWC), a Post-Graduate Diploma in Heritage and Museum Studies (joint programme of the UCT and UWC with the Robben Island Museum) and a MA in Public and Visual History (cum laude) at UWC and is now pursuing a PhD (Developmental Studies) with a focus on Arts Education at the University of Pretoria. He has worked for the District Six Museum, Human Sciences Research Council and Press, CIPSET at the NMU and the Department of Higher Education and Training. He has consulted and served for various government departments, Ministerial Task Teams and organisations in the areas of arts, culture, heritage, policy, higher education and publishing. He was a Mail and Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans (2016) for Arts and Culture. He has curated and co-curated several exhibitions for various institutions and has served on various adjudication panels for several juried exhibitions locally and abroad. He most recently completed the Courant Du Monde Programme (Itinérarie Culture) focusing on the organisation of temporary exhibitions and the circulation of cultural goods in African Institutions run by the French Ministry of Culture in Paris. He was most recently, Chief Curator for the Red Location Art Gallery at the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality before joining UP Museums as the Curator: Art Exhibitions and Galleries.

GPS projects announced for 2025

Exciting news! Our dedicated jury, researcher Siphokazi Tau, consultant and project manager Musonda Chimba, and curator Uthando Baduza, have selected the three projects that will be supported with a GPS grant in 2025. Read more about each project on our website.

Peiso ea Likhomo © Photo credit: Motho.oa.bohlokoa © Motho.oa.bohlokoa

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