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Sit Stories 2025
Sit Stories 2025
The Sit Stories 2025 projects emerged from an interdisciplinary and community-engaged approach to teaching and learning that sought to bridge the gaps between students, curriculum, and community through the integration of History, Visual Arts, Drama, oral history, storytelling, photography, and embodied creative practice.
BEd 1 Visions of Wellington Photo Voice
BEd 1 Visions of Wellington Photo Voice
First-year students participated in the Photo Voice: Images of Wellington project, in which they explored Wellington and received an introduction to Social Sciences through photography as a form of visual inquiry and social reflection. Drawing on the Photo Voice methodology, students visited various locations in Wellington and documented social, cultural, political, and environmental issues affecting their communities. Through the integration of Social Sciences and Visual Arts, students used both visual and written forms to express their understanding of society, identity, and place while developing artistic and critical reflective skills.
Photo Below Left: "This photo demonstrates a strong understanding of Social Science. One of the social issues in this photo is economic factors, which suggest that this destruction may indicate a lack of maintenance, poverty, or the effects of economic decline. The art element (line) in this photo evokes powerful emotions. The different types of lines (vertical and diagonal) of the walls convey a sense of loss, especially abandonment."
Photo Below Right: "The taxi rank shows us the importance of public transport for us as people, and how it reflects heritage and the environment. The form emphasises the rhythm of people's movements. This is important because it creates a sense of unity.”
BEd 2 Story Chairs
BEd 2 Story Chairs
The Red Story Chair Project formed part of the broader Sit Stories 2025 Culture Walk and Heritage Day initiative, integrating History and Visual Arts through oral history, storytelling, and arts-based learning practices. Second-year Intermediate Phase students conducted oral history interviews with family and community members, collecting stories, memories, photographs, and lived experiences connected to Wellington and surrounding communities. These narratives were subsequently translated into painted red chairs through visual symbolism, colour, texture, pattern, and material exploration.
The project positioned the chair as both a metaphorical and material storytelling object, linking personal and community histories with creative expression and heritage engagement. Through the process, students explored themes of memory, cultural identity, belonging, transformation, and historical awareness within interdisciplinary learning contexts.
The assessment combined oral history research with visual translation and artmaking processes.
A grandmother sharing family documents, photographs, and personal memories during an oral history interview conducted as part of the Story Chair Project.
Photos: Old, discarded campus chairs were upcycled by students in preparation for the project.
Students collaboratively engaged in narrative chair painting during Sit Stories 2025, where peer dialogue, storytelling, and shared experimentation became more prominent than technical comparison.
Story Chair Narratives
Story Chair Narratives
Students also created short digital audio narratives based on their interviews. These recordings were linked to the chairs via QR codes installed during the Sit Stories Heritage Walk, enabling visitors to listen to the stories while physically engaging with the chairs and the heritage route.
All the recordings were uploaded to a public platform, allowing visitors to listen to the stories of local community members. Each chair was assigned a corresponding number, linking the artwork, the red chair, to the historical research and audio recordings.
Listen to Chair 52's narration (to the right).
Listen to Chair 34's narration (below)
Events
Events
Sit Stories
Sit Stories
The chairs formed part of the Sit Stories Culture Walk held on Wednesday, 12 March 2025, between the Cape Peninsula University of Technology Wellington Campus and the Breytenbach Sentrum. Visitors moved along the “Red Chair Trail,” where each installation unlocked personal and community narratives through QR-linked audio stories. Along the route, participants encountered poetry performances, music, exhibitions, storytelling sessions, and a range of heritage activities presented across Wellington. In this way, the chairs became interactive markers that connected academic spaces with local memory, lived experience, and student learning.
The trail established both a symbolic and spatial connection between the university and the wider community. Through the interplay of sound, visual imagery, movement, and public engagement, the project fostered immersive, multisensory encounters with heritage and history. These experiences invited participants to reflect on identity, memory, belonging, and the layered histories embedded within the Wellington landscape.
The Red Story Chair Project formed part of the broader Sit Stories community engagement initiative, which gained institutional and public visibility through collaborations between Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the Breytenbach Sentrum, local schools, community organisations, and heritage stakeholders such as the Wellington Museum. The initiative foregrounded interdisciplinary teaching, student participation, and socially responsive learning through arts-based, heritage-centred, and community-engaged approaches.
20250312_180009.mp4Students and community members followed the chairs along the Sit Stories 2025 Heritage Walk route, attending events and listening to oral stories by scanning the QR code to access the numbered narratives linked to each chair.
Library
Library
The CPUT Wellington Campus Library served as one of the central exhibition and storytelling spaces during Sit Stories 2025. Chairs were installed along the heritage route and linked to library-based activities such as Living Room Stories, where community members shared memories and oral narratives connected to Wellington’s social and cultural history.
The programme also included a discussion between members of the Wellington Minstrels and the manager of the Wellington Museum, Olivia le Cordeur, followed by a minstrel procession to the Breytenbach Centre, celebrating this unique South African cultural tradition. The library space became an interactive environment where visual art, oral history, performance, and public engagement intersected.
Story-telling: Choir performance - for "Sit-stories" - in the Wellington CPUT library
Posted by Elsibe McGuffog
20250312_180206.mp4Sit Stories event in the libraryCPUT Wellington Campus Val de Charon Serenade group
Student Feedback
Student Feedback
*Student feedback was translated from Afrikaans to English.
In the media
In the media
Education Faculty and community celebrate their shared stories, CPUT News (Thursday, 27 March 2025) (To the right)
Research
Research
Teacher Education & Interdisciplinary Research (TEIR) Conference
Teacher Education & Interdisciplinary Research (TEIR) Conference
Adrienne attended The Teacher Education & Interdisciplinary Research Conference (TEIR) between 7 and 10 April 2025 at Sun City in the Northwest Province, where she presented a paper, in collaboration with Dr Kobie Meiring, on the following topic: “Chairs as Metaphors: Exploring Voices through Heritage, Stories, and Art Making in a Transdisciplinary Project” which centred on the symbolic significance of chairs as sites of gathering, memory, and shared knowledge.
In this paper, Dr Adrienne van As and Dr Kobie Meiring explore how storytelling and artmaking can serve as transformative and participatory pedagogical tools, demonstrating how everyday objects like chairs can facilitate inclusive dialogue, intergenerational learning, and the co-construction of knowledge. The session was well received, prompting rich discussions around the roles of metaphor, art, and place-based inquiry in teacher education, and emphasising the importance of innovative, culturally responsive approaches to fostering student engagement in educational spaces.
Link to the programme: TEIR 2025 Program_Final_01.04.pdf
Link to the presentation: TEIR 2025 Presentation.pdf
Journal Article (still under review)
Journal Article (still under review)
Title: Chairs as Metaphors: Integrating Heritage, Storytelling, and Art in a Transdisciplinary Project
This article examines a teaching project at CPUT's Wellington Campus that brought History and Art together. BEd Intermediate Phase students took part in creative storytelling activities, using chairs as symbols to explore heritage. The project, based on constructivist, decolonial, and embodied learning theories, aimed to make education more inclusive and relevant to students' lives. By analysing students' stories, artwork, and reflections, the study shows how these activities can help shape identity, deepen historical understanding, and inspire changes in the curriculum.
Submitted to the journal Yesterday&Today
Link to article (under review): Chairs as Metaphors: Chairs as Metaphors in Teacher Education: Integrating Heritage, Storytelling, and Art in a Transdisciplinary Project
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