Celebrating change: TAPESTRIES TELLING STORIES – TATHAM ART GALLERY, Chief Albert Luthuli Road (opposite City Hall), Pietermaritzburg (19 September – 2 November 2008).

The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Media in Education Trust Africa (MIET) and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education are celebrating their “partnerships in rural development”.

Through these partnerships, about 120 education centres are being established across rural areas of the province and schools are being turned into “centres of care and support” for children and families affected by poverty, HIV and AIDS.

The focus of this celebration is to give rural communities, as vitally important but often forgotten partners in rural development, opportunities to tell their stories of change through door-sized beaded tapestries.

The process started with community workshops in 12 rural centres across KwaZulu-Natal, through which communities reflected on their past and present and defined their future vision.

Forty-eight talented artists from the 12 communities then created the tapestries, each one telling a community’s unique and compelling stories of change.

The exhibition showcases the tapestries as well as the stories and the faces of the people behind them.