IEB Conference 2017
The David Krut education team headed to the IEB Conference to set up an exhibition stand of curated books to offer to the IEB curriculum teachers as additional resources for their teaching practice; as well as to promote our range of titles and to further establish David Krut Bookstores as an organisation renowned for its offering educational support in the fields of visual arts, design and dramatic arts.
The conference aims to facilitate dialogue between the IEB and teachers, during which research, curriculum objectives, assessment criteria and other imperative aspects of the learning process are addressed. The education team participated as exhibitors over 3 days catering to the subjects Visual Arts, Design and Dramatic Arts.
The education team’s planning was geared towards engaging with as many of the teachers as possible; in order to understand and cater to their curriculum needs , maximize our impact and extend our level of educational support thus it was decided that a plethora of titles would be featured at the conference.
The Birchwood Hotel & O. R. Tambo Conference was engulfed with educators from across South Africa, local exhibitors, senior learners in embroidered blazers, and staff attendants who attended to all present professionally
Design 3rdFebruary
The education team intentionally took plenty of stock both in variety and numbers; this was accompanied by decent sales from titles such as Logo Life; Street Fonts and the Street Sketchbook (authors). The most impressive results were in new contacts achieved; these new clients will enable us to make the bookstore more accessible to more educators.
Dramatic Arts 4th February
The Dramatic Arts teachers were hugely impressed with the titles offered by David Krut Bookstore; some even mentioning that the books have mostly been “impossible to find”. Our collection of new South African plays, such as John Kani’s Missing, Neil Coppen’s Tin Bucket Drum and Craig Higginson’s Three Plays, were well received and were consequentially popular with the teachers.
Amongst the countless friendly faces we encountered at our stall, we had the pleasure of meeting the well acclaimed Mike van Graan who skimmed our stall only to find one of his own pieces- Green Man Flashing.
Mike van Graan is celebrated for works such as Iago’s Last Dance (2009), Odysseus van Holl (2008) and Two to Tango (2005) amongst many others. He is also an Executive Director of the African Arts Institute and is the former Secretary General of the Arterial Network and is thus an appreciated influencer in the arena of the arts and order items.
Visual Arts 18 February 2017
The Visual Arts pop up store occupied an exhibitor’s space twice the size of the norm to provide sufficient space to showcase all of the Visual Arts books at the Domestic Conference venue. The best-sellers of the day books included the new Vitamin P3, Drawing People, Painting People and Drawing and Painting. The Teachers were also pleased to see the full series of the “This Is…” artists series. We received positive feedback about the variety of titles that we carried, which constantly tempted the teachers to make a new purchase every time they walked past our store.
It was particularly fascinating to observe that some of the Art teachers are actually practising artists who produce their own work for exhibitions. An example would be Izak Buys from Covenant College whose wood burn works have appeared at the Liza More Selfie exhibition.
Overall a successful day to wrap up our visits to the IEB Conference 2017, which was a beneficial experience for David Krut bookstore as a learning curve for the following year, and making new contacts to build new relationships in which we can continue to provide good service to them.