The Creative Exchange is a peer-to-peer initiative that pairs The Academy’s Honours students with independent art and design spaces across Southern Africa. Rather than working on classroom-based assignments, students take on real clients, real deadlines, and real design constraints with the aim of building skills in participatory co-design, ethical research practice, and industry-ready problem-solving.
Mbare Art Space: Regeneration in the Heart of Harare
Founded in 2019 by Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa, Mbare Art Space occupies a former colonial-era beer hall in the high-density suburb of Mbare in the capitol city of Harare. Beer halls of this kind were originally built by colonial authorities to regulate and profit from African urban life; today, operating as a nonprofit under a long-term lease from the Harare City Council, the site has been transformed into artist studios, exhibition space, and a mentorship hub for emerging Zimbabwean artists. At Mbare Art Space, The Academy students worked on visual communication briefs supporting the organisation's ongoing community and exhibition programming.
One standout brief saw student Alicia Landman develop merchandise for the space, drawing on the work of two of Mbare Art Space’s resident artists. Landman took inspiration from artist William Kachinnjika’s use of rope in his artworks for the design direction, while pieces from Lomedy Mhako’s exhibition were photographed by fellow student Chandre Schultz and printed directly onto the finished bags.
Pamurove Foundation: Design Meets Land on Harare's Rural Edge
Students also travelled to Pamurove Foundation, a learning site on the rural-urban edge outside Harare founded by curator and educator Dr. Mike Mavura, who also conceived the Creative Exchange programme itself, when he worked at The Academy as a Visual Studies lecturer. The Pamurove Foundation integrates contemporary art and design practice with ecology and Zimbabwe's agrarian traditions. Mavura describes the site's name as referring to "the depression in the field where rainwater gathers, retaining life, nurturing the greenest crops", an image that sets the tone for the kind of grounded, experimental work students took on there.
At Pamurove Foundation, students were briefed on a new hair and skincare range made from all-natural ingredients, developed for Zimbabwean customers. Their task was to build a compelling online campaign to introduce the range, driving brand awareness and engagement from the ground up. The brief carried a distinct creative challenge: conveying the quality, authenticity,
and benefits of natural products through photography alone can be difficult, particularly where some ingredients are hard to access or photograph in a way that resonates locally. Multimedia student Ocean Stevenson worked with photography student Chandre Shultz to find innovative ways to communicate the range's authenticity through social media, pushing well beyond a straightforward product shoot.
Building Industry-Ready Graduates
By embedding students in creative organisations and communities, Creative Exchange gives The Academy’s Honours students a chance to test their skills against the unpredictability of practice, collaborating across borders, disciplines, and contexts well before graduation.
