FRATPACKER WORLD.

CR8TING CONVERSATIONS, CONNECTIONS & CURIOUSITY

Creativity is not birthed in isolation nor fear. It is birthed from community and curiosity. Being in a world where we are influenced and affected by the environment, cultures and people around us, it is impossible to say that your creativity was sparked alone and by yourself. The questions that were burning inside you. The ones that had you asking around and searching high and low for the answers. The ones that had you stretching and exercising your imagination to the fullest. Those questions were your curiosity leading you to create new answers and logic for yourself. The biggest problem we find in creating is trying to connect ourselves as a community with so much going on. There are so many new creations being made. Conversations being had. Communities that are being built. Curiosities being explored everyday and yet it feels like they all go unseen or unheard, unless you in the Illuminati fold. Well thanks to the great people at The Kollektive, they are helping to break that mould with CR8TOR CON and recently hosted a week of panels called CRTOR WEEK AFRICA.

The Kollektive is an advertising agency that focuses on experiential marketing that has been running since 2017 and founded by Jay Kayembe. They’ve always had a focus on the creative space encompassing all aspects [art, music, fashion, design, media] of it as part of their messaging and their way of pushing forward the creative. They focus on opening doors and introducing new names into rooms that creatives struggle to get into or don’t even know they exist. With this mission and passion in mind The Kollektive birthed a new experience called CR8TORCON for creatives to engage and create in-person conversations amongst each other and with professional and experienced creatives. Their debut happened in 2024 and have been going strong since then having panels in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.

This year The Kollektive decided that a one-day panel wasn’t enough and decided to see how far they can push the experience and conversations. CR8TOR WEEK AFRICA was born. For a whole week starting from the 24^th of March – 29^th of March 2026 The Kollektive had a week of experiences and panels built towards helping local creatives gain more knowledge and insight into the creative industry as well as providing activities promoting health, fitness and fun. CR8TOR WEEK AFRICA [CWA] consisted of 4 nights of panel discussions, a run club, Pilates and an after-party to wrap up the week. The panels each had their own theme and discussion points being split into Corporate Culture, Design, Art & Music.

To start off the festivities, there was a 5KM run club that took place on the 21^st of March in partnership with Rexona & Vault Strength Club. I would love to tell you how it was, but when I say, “I run the streets”, I’m speaking more figuratively the literally. What I can speak to is the official launch of CWA, which took place on the 24^th of March 2026 at the Mesh Club, at Keyes Art Mile Gallery. The launch was beautiful and elegant. Arriving to free champagne, wine and tapas was definitely a wonderful way to start the week of panels but even better than that was the actual panel and topic being spoken on. The topic was corporate culture, which does sound more suit and tie then art and expression but the plot twist is that it was more about how the cultures built by creatives and their communities can be adapted into the corporate space and how to extract the resources from corporates to support, invest in and help build these cultures. The panel led by, broadcasting legend, Loot Love featured keynote talks from international speakers in Andrew Nocker & Leila Fataar. Both talks were interesting and informative with Andrew speaking on how AI can be evolved to make art more accessible for creatives while at the same time keeping quality control and Leila having experience working with Adidas & Diageo, taught us how you can bring the corner store talks into the corner office space.

The keynote talks were followed by a panel featuring Kenzero, Sunshine Shibambo, Jean Dimitri and as well as the two keynote speakers. It was lovely hearing and learning from each panellist because it exposed you to worlds and people that you never knew of, which expands into seeing things that are possible that you never had even thought or imagined could be possible. Hearing different experiences of working with brands and corporations and insider stories, such as Sunshine’s Channel O logo story (don’t worry we’re working on making the interview happen so you can read it for yourself) and many more felt inviting and created a safe space to have honest and open conversations amongst our peers. It was also a fantastic opportunity not to just network but catch up and have discussions with our creative peers.

The second night of panels took place on the 26^th of March 2026. It consisted of two panels that took place at the same time, which caused some trouble for people having to decide on going to one. It would have been nice if they could have separated them either by days or time slots but organising such a detailed production and catered event isn’t easy and is NOT cheap at all by any means, so I understand how logistically this was the best solution for the night. The two panels taking place were the design and art panel. The design panel consisted of; international designer Sean Brown, Misha Van Der Hoven, Jared Fynn, Mickyle Berling, Francois Ferriera, and hosted by Tony Gum and Scoop Makhathini. I wish I could tell you how it was, but I opted to go to the art panel that consisted of; Nene Mahlangu, Damn Vandal, Cherné Africa, Sanele Qwabe, Simhle Plaatjies and it was hosted by Kabelo Moremi and Tinuke Eboka.

I opted for the art panel because of two reasons: Damn Vandal & Sanele Qwabe. Having a passion and love for graffiti since a kid, I needed to see and hear a legend, in Vandal, speaking on his work and experience. Then having a love of comics and anime which leads into toys and action figures I had to go and see Sanele Qwabe, the creator of Kind Kid, live in action because I am a groupie, so much so that I couldn’t even go say. “Hi.”, because I was going to fan and geek out so hard. Now, while I might have been there to see those two specifically, I got more than I bargained for and imagined. Starting off with Nene Mahlangu who is a self-taught artist and excellent at it so much so that she was commissioned by The South African Reserve Bank to design money. Yes, that’s right her art is on money and not just that her story and motivation to have a black woman be featured on money for the first time in South Africa was inspiring and eye-opening because from going to creating in your bedroom to creating mint-press is crazy. Her passion, personality and fearlessness in express herself and opinions (trust another interview we are working on because she has a crazy story to tell) showed that authenticity will never be under-valued. Then you get panellists like Simhle Plaatjies who has 20 years of hockey experience before going into art professionally and working with international brands, showing the versatility and brilliance of black women.

The art panel truly left me in awe and adding more names to my, ‘I’m such a groupie of…’ list. The last pane of the week took place on the 27^th of March, and the focus was music, so you know I had to be there. The music panel featured; international DJs Jean Dominique, Mila-Rose and MamThug, international dancer and stuntwoman Sne Mbatha and was hosted by Fif_Laaa and Leddi G. Firstly, it was lovely to see a panel just full of women and especially in the music space where the voices that are given spaces to be heard and have impact and usually men dominated. This alone helped break down the mental and physical barriers for women in the space. Secondly, hearing all the remarkable things and the perspective of these leaders in their respective spaces just showed how much more development and investment is needed not only in the music space but in women in the music space. There are so many barriers and blockades that the fact they were able to still push through it all while keep their spirit and who they are intact is nothing to take lightly and we are working on making sure their stories and voices get heard on this platform.

I have to mention that after every panel there was a bit of an after-party with DJs, food and drinks to go around and just have people vibe out while we get to know, catch-up, chat, laugh and mingle with all those who came to the panel. These were all dope chill and hang sessions, but the real after-party came on the 28^th of March with the CWA Wrap Party held in collaboration with Soundset Sunday at The Playground. If you don’t know about Soundset Sunday, then you’ve been living under a rock and unfortunately this is not the article to help you move from that rock but I can say this was the Soundset to be hosted on a Saturday and feature two stages. All I can say is that the wrap party really did feel like a party to release your inner creative no matter your occupation and profession. The aesthetics, activation, food, music, people and all-round joy that was had was the perfect way to wrap up a historic week. A big thank you to The Kollektivefor opening worlds, minds and doors for the creative community and we pray for your success so you can keep up the magnificent work and fighting the good fight.