Seen Here: 🎨🏙️ Johannesburg’s creative future belongs in the hands of the people creating it. Creative Futures Africa: Beyond the Summit brings artists, designers, entrepreneurs, cultural practitioners, funders and city-makers together during Design Week South Africa to move the conversation from ideas to action. Because Africa’s creative economy is not a sideshow — it is infrastructure, opportunity and the shape of our future. ✨🌍  Photo Credit: Supplied
JOHANNESBURG, 6 OCTOBER 2026 — Johannesburg’s creative community will have an opportunity to shape the next phase of Africa’s creative-economy agenda when Creative Futures Africa: Beyond the Summit opens the conversation to the public during Design Week South Africa this week.
Hosted by Jozi my Jozi and Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) in partnership with Andani.Africa and Creative Capital, the free public event takes place on Thursday, 8 October, from 17:30 to 19:30 at A42 House in Parktown North.
The gathering follows the second Creative Futures Africa Summit, which brought together leaders and practitioners from across the creative economy, business, finance, technology, policy, tourism, climate and city-making sectors.
Rather than simply reporting back on the closed-door discussions, Beyond the Summit is intended to place those ideas in the hands of the people working across Johannesburg’s creative ecosystem every day — allowing practitioners, entrepreneurs, students, cultural organisations, funders and members of the public to interrogate, challenge and build on the emerging agenda.
From ideas to practical action
At the heart of the Summit was a recognition that Africa’s creative economy cannot be treated as a peripheral sector or occasional showcase.
Instead, it was framed as essential economic and social infrastructure — capable of creating livelihoods, shaping identity, strengthening cities and opening new opportunities for innovation and investment.
The discussions explored the practical conditions required for creative industries to grow sustainably, including investment and fit-for-purpose funding models, stronger policy and intellectual-property frameworks, better data and market access, creative infrastructure, mobility and inclusive public spaces.
Participants also examined the importance of stronger collaboration between government, business, cultural institutions and communities.
A recurring theme was the role of cities in enabling creative economies to flourish.
Johannesburg’s creative economy in focus
For Johannesburg, the conversation has particular resonance.
The city’s music, fashion, design, food, heritage, visual arts and entrepreneurial culture form part of its everyday identity and economy. The challenge is ensuring that the people creating this value — from artists and designers to makers, traders, cultural workers and local businesses — are able to participate in and benefit from the opportunities their creativity generates.
Dawn Robertson, Visitor and Creative Economy Catalyst at Jozi my Jozi, said the Summit had deliberately sought to move beyond broad recognition that creativity matters.
“The Summit made a strong case for the practical systems that make creative work viable: investment, access, safe and connected cities, stronger partnerships and space for people to make, trade, perform and grow.”
Robertson said taking the conversation into the broader creative community was essential.
“Johannesburg’s creative future cannot be designed behind closed doors; it has to be built with the people, places and enterprises that give this city its energy and character.”
A conversation shaped by Design Week
The public dialogue forms part of the Design Week South Africa Johannesburg programme, running from 8 to 11 October.
This year’s Design Week theme, “The Shape of Us”, provides a natural backdrop for the conversation, particularly as the creative economy increasingly intersects with questions of urban development, identity, place-making and economic opportunity.
Robertson said the theme creates an opportunity to consider how design and creativity influence not only the spaces people inhabit, but also the economies and narratives communities create around them.
Design Week South Africa brings together exhibitions, studio and urban tours, product launches, installations, panel discussions and workshops celebrating South African creativity in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Broadening participation
For BASA CEO Beth Arendse, opening the Summit conversation to the public is an important step towards ensuring that policy and sector priorities are grounded in the lived realities of creative practitioners.
“Creative Futures Africa was convened to strengthen the conditions in which South Africa’s and Africa’s creative economies can flourish,” said Arendse.
“That requires more than dialogue between institutions; it requires the knowledge, challenge and participation of the artists, designers, cultural practitioners and entrepreneurs who experience those conditions first-hand.”
She said Beyond the Summit would create an opportunity for the ideas generated during the September Summit to be tested against real experience and carried forward through collaboration.
A platform for the next chapter
The evening will take the form of a facilitated panel discussion, bringing together voices from Johannesburg’s creative, cultural, business and city-making communities.
Panelists will explore issues including investment, infrastructure, market access, creative-city development, public space and inclusive opportunity, before opening the discussion to audience participation.
The objective is not simply to revisit what was discussed at the Summit, but to ask a more important question: what happens next?
By opening the conversation to a wider audience, organisers hope to build a more collaborative programme of action for Johannesburg, South Africa and the broader African creative economy.
For a city whose cultural identity is constantly being created and reinvented, the conversation arrives at an important moment.
Johannesburg’s creative future will not be shaped by ideas alone. It will be shaped by the people willing to turn those ideas into action.
Event details
Creative Futures Africa: Beyond the Summit
Date: Thursday, 8 October 2026
Time: 17:30–19:30
Venue: A42 House, 6A 8th Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg
Entry: Free and open to all ages
Booking: Reserve a place via Luma
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