The Curriculum Development Project Trust (CDP) was established in 1989 to promote the creative arts within the formal and non-formal education sectors. Over the years, the organisation has developed powerful and effective methods that use creative arts for healing, personal expression and development. As a socially responsive organisation committed to the struggle for social justice and redress nationally and regionally; the CDP brings the evidence of the deeply transformative and powerful tools of the creative arts and cultural interventions to healing processes, human rights education and health education, psychosocial support as well as skills development. The primary focus in the CDP’s work is vulnerable women, children and youth, with a policy of inclusivity relating men as an important part of the social dynamic. The CDP’s work is divided into 4 units.
1. Early Childhood Development (ECD) Unit – The focus is on improving the quality of the early learning years for young children through the arts.
2. Schools Unit - Through the Schools’ Unit the CDP believes that schools play a central role in developing the value system that guides a nation. We then use different arts methodologies to create an awareness of these values and create a safe space for learners to freely develop, explore and articulate their demands.
3. Women’s Development Unit - The programmes provided within the Women’s Unit are designed to build women’s ability to participate in decision-making, advocate and campaign on issues of violence and gender rights, actively contribute towards good governance and take part in income generating activities to promote self reliance. The content is delivered through the medium of creative arts, most particularly the visual arts as a means of opening up new spaces for narrative and dialogue. All processes are approachedm from the perspective of personal experience; this is both self-reflective and developmental, leading to forming a common understanding of the issues that women are mostly faced with. The Women Make their Mark Programmes focus on women activists. In these courses, women use the creative arts as expressive vehicles for transformation – to explore and express their own understanding and experiences[; to share these ideas and skills with other women; and to build women’s voices in our patriarchy society which too often uses violence and power to silence us. The CDP works with groups of people living in the Johannesburg Inner City, Bertrams, Ellis Park Precinct and Johannesburg East area to build collective care for our own environment and immediate communities: to beautify parks and public spaces; with children to create a lantern festival; to use the arts to heal the pain of xenophobia and prejudice. Originally conceived to develop creative arts curricula for the public schools system in an independent South Africa, CDP today still maintains projects to advance and develop arts learning and teaching in the schools. These include working with teachers and students to make masks for the Gauteng Children's Carnival; and organising secondary schools to learn about, and place on their walls, South Africa’s national symbols. The CDP developed the Artist in Schools Policy Document which was approved in January 2013.
