Explorations in South African flute music

"Music chooses you, and not the other way around," says flautist and lecturer Dr Liesl Stoltz, about how and why she recorded the first CD of flute music by South African composers.

About the Stepping Stone Video Outreach Programme

Stepping Stone outreach video training was launched in 2012, and is hosted by UCT TV Studio, part of the Centre for Film and Media Studies (CFMS). Through Stepping Stone, the CFMS aims to open UCT facilities and knowledge to passionate aspiring film–makers from disadvantaged backgrounds, who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to enrol for UCT's film programmes. Great care is taken in selecting a diverse group of participants for each round. The videos highlight UCT research, innovation and social responsiveness.

The CFMS ran two rounds of the outreach video training programme during 2014, thanks to ongoing support from the Percy Fox Foundation and UCT TV Studio.

The fifth Stepping Stone course was run during November and December 2014, and produced four five–minute videos. One of the videos profiled a doctoral programme in Astronomy, another showcased a UCT project to record a new CD of South African compositions for the flute, and two focused on various strategies used by communities in the Western Cape to resist the effects of poverty, crime and substance abuse. A video about Ceasefire, a project that focuses on interrupting violence and combating addiction in neighbourhoods like Hanover Park, combined the personal stories of those touched by the project with perspectives from staff and volunteers.

This round of Stepping Stone was the first presented as an official UCT short course. It was registered as a 145–contact–hour, NQF level 5, 15–credit course during 2014. Participants and staff involved with the project were overjoyed that the Vice–Chancellor, Dr Max Price, attended the screening of the films, and handed out the certificates of completion.

From 2015 to 2017, Stepping Stone – along with another UCT short course outreach video programme, Reel Lives – will be the case studies for research centred on the impacts of youth media in South Africa. The National Research Foundation awarded primary investigator Dr Liani Maasdorp (from CFMS) and co–investigators Dr Nic Theo from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and Lyle Kane, a CFMS PhD candidate, a grant for this community engagement research. The grant includes bursaries for one PhD, two master's and two honours students.

During 2015 two more rounds of Stepping Stone will be presented: a multi–camera course during June and July, and a single–camera course during November and December.

For more on Stepping Stone, please see the UCT TV Studio website, or visit the Stepping Stone YouTube channel.