Amazing Women in Arts Event brings women’s voices to the fore in the Eastern Cape

From 8 to 10 August 2025, Dimbaza in the Eastern Cape hosted the Amazing Women Arts Event (AWAE), a multi-disciplinary initiative showcasing music, theatre, dance, visual arts and poetry created, directed and performed by women from Dimbaza, King William’s Town and surrounding areas.

Founded in 2013 by theatre practitioner Mandisi Sindo, AWAE was inspired by his upbringing in a single-mother household and his desire to provide women with a safe platform to tell their own stories. Sindo is also the founder of the Khayelitsha Art School and Rehabilitation Centre (KASI RC) and the originator of the Shack Theatre model. The event’s curator, Somila Toyi—known as Liso the Musician—first took part in Sindo’s “Healing and Teaching Women” workshops before helping to develop AWAE into a fixture of National Women’s Day celebrations.

This year’s programme began with an intensive day of music and theatre workshops led by Sindo and Liso, followed by a public celebration on 9 August. By bringing together emerging and professional artists from rural areas, AWAE aimed to address the lack of opportunities for women in the arts, raise awareness of gender-based violence, and support socio-economic development through job creation.

The French Institute of South Africa partnered with Sindo and KASI RC to deliver the 2025 edition, continuing a collaboration that began in 2021 when Sindo joined the South African delegation to the Afrique-France Summit in Montpellier.