Background and Nature of Business
Over a thirty year period, Felicity Keats-Morrison has developed a unique method of unlocking creativity in different fields of creativity ie writing, maths and science subjects, arts and culture and storytelling. She also established a publishing company for the purpose of documenting all the above talents. In 1998, she presented the method to ELITS - Education Library Information Technology Services (KZN). She trained mentors for this department in 2002. ELITS project was a success and since then, most of the other Departments of Education in South Africa have incorporated this right brain method, in small or big ways.
The Dancing Pencils Literacy Development Project was born as an initiative of heads of libraries and as an initiative in some education departments in different provinces, The company, a non-profit making organisation, called Dancing Pencils Literacy Development Project, was established mainly to assist develop the Dancing Pencils Writing clubs nationally.
The company strives to provide professionalism and excellence in developing of writing clubs nationally. We now have a Dancing Pencils Writing Club Committee in each of the nine provinces, set up to promote the books of Dancing Pencils Authors in their provinces over the media on national and international book days and to answer questions about right brain writing and the mentor programme.
With the collective education industry’s knowledge and the experience of our management team we are well equipped to meet the demands of a changing education. KZN Arts, Culture and Tourism, and the Rights on the Child’s Commission have also become involved.
Felicity Keats-Morrison also works in partnership with the PanSALanguage Board in mentor training and unlocking creativity of learners, with great success, The outcome has been the publishing of books in South Africa’s marginalised home languages.
Strategic Position
The non profit company has been set up to
- Pay for mentor training
- Pay for the origination of new books by Dancing Pencils Writing clubs
- Pay for the printing of these books in bigger print runs to give to disadvantaged schools in rural and township areas.
Our strategy for 2009 is to achieve exceptional growth in our core business by aggressively and consistently marketing the company at every opportunity.
Board Members
Previous board member and executive director, Luke Dhlamini, now passed on on 6th July 2005, whose energy and passion and desire for a non profit company brought things to this point.. |
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Luke Dhlamini collected his experience by working as a manager for Hopkins and Associates, a Labour Relations Law firm, for three years (1989 – 1993). In 1993 he joined the local Peace Accord (Newcastle) and he successfully created a healthy atmosphere for the youths of different political affiliation. One of his highlights with the Peace Accord was in 1994 when he was sponsored by then Iscor Pty Ltd to a tune of forty thousand rands to stage a pre-election festival that would calm all the youths in the area. That was superbly achieved, and he raised more than seventy thousand rands in that particular project.
During 1996/97 he attended and successfully completed a basic level sports administration course organised and conducted by the then National Sports council. He was also instrumental in setting up the South African Football Players’ Union together with Mr Julius Tivhani Sono, Marks Maponyane etc.
During 1998 he was offered by Saka-Northern an opportunity to raise funds for the organisation, which he successfully accomplished with flying colours. His main task and goal within the Dancing Pencils Literacy Development Project was to have corporate partners who assist in the development of literacy in South Africa and the rest of Africa in the future. His education background from school was not a bed of roses.
He then completed his schooling with Damelin Newcastle, 1998-2001 where he obtained his Diploma in Marketing.
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Profile of Bonga Zondo
Bonga Zondo has a three year National Diploma in Journalism from M.L.Sultan Technikon (Now called Durban University of Technology.
In 1999, he worked as Communications Officer at KZN Newspaper.
From 2001 to 2005, he worked at University of KwaZulu-Natal, as Research Assistant and as a translator.
From 2006 till July 2008, worked as a book editor, typesetter and translator at umSinsi Press.
From 24 February 2007-20 January 2008, worked as a coordinator of Anti-Crime Musical Project funded by Department of Community Safety and Liaison.
In April 2007, represented South Africa, under Dancing Pencils Literacy Development Project, in England at the London Book Fair which was partly sponsored by Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism.
In 2001, authored a novel titled “Gone to Earth” which received a lot of newspaper review.
His anthology of poetry book was published in 2004.
In 2006, directed a traditional poetical music by artists from different local municipalities under Zululand District.
In 2006, he began a musical campaign against crime.
In 2006, he received an award for creative writing from EThekwini Municipality.
In 2006, he authored a second novel called “Potato Dance” which was launched at Klaarwater Community Hall.
In 2006, he facilitated an autobiographical story-workshop to people with disability. |
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Profile of Felicity Keats-Morrison
Felicity Keats-Morrison has a B.Com, and UED. Her brief teaching career ended with the desire to write professionally. This she has been doing for nearly fifty years, intermittently, as a freelance journalist, short story writer, editor of South Africa’s Beekeeping journal, and more recently (since 1988) as a children’s author, and in writing books dealing with the unearthing of the talents of the right brain.
In 1992 she began teaching writing, using all her knowledge and further designing a powerful lateral right brain teaching course that cut out the usual academics of the left brain and got people writing publishable work almost immediately.
Because of the need for her pupils to have a platform from which to be “heard”, she started a publishing company, umSinsi Press cc, in 1995. The number of published titles grew, from three in the first year, to a total of over 1 200 titles thirteen years later. In 1998 she started a rural literacy project, using a specially registered cc for the purpose. Five corporates assisted with five print runs of books in 2000 and 3000 print runs which went to disadvantaged rural schools without reading material
In 2002 she started to “skills transfer” her knowledge in the form of compressed “mentor” courses which take place over three days. Two and a half years ago, the concept of writing clubs was established, with the outcome being anthologies published annually, as well as some individual work from clubs Felicity is also publishing for Education departments under their trained mentors. This has resulted in the spread of good writing in many parts of South Africa, leading to better school passes and better job opportunities.
Felicity has personally trained more than 750 mentors, each training taking a full two to three days, and has worked in all nine provinces of South Africa, traing education specialists, curriculum implementers, district officials, provincial education department officials, and educators, to use non judgmental non critical methods of helping children to read and write publishable work and so rapidly increase literacy levels, even in the deepest rural areas.
Felicity also enjoys watercolour painting as a hobby. |
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Profile of Kumbulani Ndawo
Sam Ndawo’s qualifications are: STD (University of Zululand); B.A. (UNISA); B. Ed (UNISA) Post Graduate Diploma in Librarianship (Liverpool, UK). He is passionate not only about reading, but about writing and believes that a “writing and a reading nation is a winning nation.” Sam Ndawo has taken hugely revolutionary steps in encouraging educators and children in Mpumalaga to write their own stories in their own languages and in English and Afrikaans.
These have been put into books and ordered in 2000 print runs for use in Mpumalanga school classrooms and libraries. Authors earn royalties, other provinces are purchasing these books from the publisher as some of them are written in South Africa’s official languages. One book, Tinganekwane 2003, had stories by educators in nine different official South African languages. In recent years, curriculum implementers have written big books which they have also illustrated. |
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Profile of Sibongile Nzimande
Sibongile Nzimande was born in Durban. She schooled mostly in convents. In grade 5, she attended Montobelo Combined School, which was in the Danton area between Greytown and Pietermaritzburg. Sibongile finished at Oakford Priory, before attending the University of Zululand, where she did a BA and UED, along with a diploma in librarianship. This was followed by her achievement of Honours in Librarianship, and Honors in History. She is currently finishing her Masters of Arts degree, under the supervision of Professor Christian Stilwel. Sibongile taught at Inanda High, and was a lecturer at Esikhani college of Education, outside of Empangeni. Her next post was in Newcastle as HOD for Social Sciences at Madadeni college in Newcastle. She was promoted to subject advisor in Ladysmith for school libraries. Then came her promotion to Director of KZN ELITS. She held this post for seven years. Sibongile has been asked to prepare a plan to be funded over six years, whereby one thousand schools per annum are to be resourced with library materials. By the year 2010 all schools in KZN will have resources. As a provincial co-directorate ELITS KZN are charged with soliciting best practices from local new trends.
Ms Nzimade attends conferences out of the country, sources information on the internet and from journals and comes up with strategies that keep them in the forefront. Sibongile is now Director of KZN Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism. |
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Profile of Khanyi Dubazana
Khanyi Dubazana is now Director, ELITS, KZN and based in Pietermaritzburg. Previously when she was chief Education Specialist, ELITS, KZN, based in Dokkie’s centre, Durban, she took on the hugely challenging task of finding a way in which to cascade the culture of learners writing and illustrating their own stories for their classroom reading collections, when, together with other ELITS education personnel, she engaged the services of Felicity Keats to do a complete one month tour of all the regions in KZN. This was hugely exciting for learners, educators and schools and on top of that it was a great success.
Building a reading culture is a mammoth task for the country especially among the Black communities which have suffered serious deprivation of supportive resource-rich school environments. We are serving almost 6000 schools in the province and have to instil a reading culture as early as yesterday. Budgetary constraints do not allow every school to have its own collection of readers and “Creative Writing” is viewed as one of the options to enable creation of classroom collections by allowing learners to write and share their own stories. This venture is based on the belief that “Writers are readers, the more they write, the more they read.”
ELITS involvement in the Creative Writing Project in collaboration with Umsinsi Press have given learners the following opportunities:
- Allowed them to be creative and develop artistic talents
- Made learning practical and enjoyable
- Produced books in the local language
- Built a sense of pride as learners realized their writing abilities
- Encouraged social responsibility since learners had something to share with the community
- Language development
The tangible hits are:
- Publication of books entitled Pen Strokes from KZN and Sikhombindlela by advisors and educators
Publication of 86 learners’ books. |
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Profile of Daphne Mandabane
Daphne Nomfundiso Mandabane was born on 21 May 1964 in a small town called Beaufort West in the Western Cape. Daphne’s parents came to Kimberley in the Northern Cape when she was two years old.
Daphne obtained her primary education in Kimberley at Zingisa Primary School. She proceeded to Tshireleco Senior Secondary School for her High School education and obtained her matric. She studied privately with Technicon SA and obtained her B-tech degree. She got married in 1992 to Mr Mandabane who is originally from Port Elizabeth. They are blessed with three daughters aged twenty, thirteen and ten years. Daphne’s work career started in 1991 when she worked for Griekwastad Muncipality as a typist. In 1992 she was employed by the African National congress (ANC) until 1994. After the first democratic elections of 1994 she was deployed to government to work with the former Premier of the Northern Cape, Mr E.M. Dipico, as his secretary. In 2000 she requested a lateral transfer to one of the units still within the Office of the Premier. She worked in this unit - the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) - until she was placed in a newly-established unit, the Office on the Rights of the Child, in March 2002 until to date.
The vision is to “Create a Province fit for children.” The role of this office is to oversee, coordinate, facilitate, monitor and evaluate all children’s programmes and projects within and outside Government. The main objective of the office is to promote and protect children’s rights. The Protection and Promotion of children’s Rights is a collective effort of all duty bearers to children. The office is proactively looking at the role of the children in the second economy hence initiating a pilot project of training children to write their own books. Children selected for this project are from sectors such as disabled, street children in and outside shelters, and infected and affected children. The intention is to ensure that this project reaches out to all children of the province. Ms Daphne Mandabane challenges the business sector to play their role as duty-bearers to these children. She invites the business sector to a partnership of ensuring that the rights of the children are protected and promoted. They should fulfil their social responsibility. |
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Profile of Patricia Devenish
Qualifications
BA University of the Witwatersrand,
BA Hons Unisa
Transvaaal Teachers’ Higher Diploma JCE
L.T.CL Trinty College London
Experience
Teacher: Primary School, Secondary School (including Special Education)
Lecturer Various Teachers’ Training Colleges
Tutor in English at the University of the Western Cape
Educator/Librarian at the Open Air School
Other information
Workshops Have presented workshops for Very Special Arts (Speech and Drama)
APEK (now Naptosa) Speech and Drama Dance and Music
Dancing Pencils Writing dialogue for children’s plays
Conferences attended International School Libraries 2003 Durban
School Libraries 2006 Portugal where I presented a paper “Creating a Book Culture in a Special Needs School” |
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Profile of Mariam Akabor
Mariam Akabor obtained her BA Honours degree in English and Media & Communication from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is also a qualified right-brain mentor. Mariam began writing at a very young age and began attending writing classes by Felicity whilst still in high school. To date, she has had 5 books published. The latest book, Flat 9, has been approved as a high school reader in Mpumalanga and has also been included in the Grey Street Literary Trail, hosted by the Literary Tourism Project at UKZN.
Mariam was the editor of the Dancing Pencils Club Magazine from 2003-2007. She is involved in editing and designing books for Umsinsi Press. She enjoys writing and reading. Mariam is currently studying for her Masters degree in English. |
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Profile of Veena Gangaram – Educator, Facilitator, Mentor
EXPERIENCE and CAREER
Qualified educator with 29 years teaching experience in the intermediate and senior phase. In charge of Reading and Creative Writing Motivation Programmes since 1989 to date. Post graduate course in resource Centre Management. Trained as a Creative Writing Mentor in 2002 under Felicity Keats. Started the first club under the banner of Dancing Pencils. Published the first learner’s book in the Kwa-Mashu District. Since 2002, published 25 stand alone books and 5 anthologies to date. Learners are workshopped on how to “Develop their creative Writing Skills” once a week after school hours.
WORKSHOPS
Conducted the following workshops for ELITS (Education Library Informatio and Technology services) for the Department of Education – KZN.
- “How to motivate learners to read” – 5 workshops in the Kwa Mashu, Ndwedwe, Inanda, Newlands East, Newlands West and Tongaat areas in 2002 for educators.
- Workshopped educations on “Reading and Creative Writing “ at a Tent Reading Festival in Bergville, Estcourt in September 2003.
- Workshopped Chief Education Specialists for Languages in the Intermediate and Senior Phase in Mpumalanga in August 2008 on “Get Addicted to Reading” and “Reading Strategies.”
- Currently conducting workshops on “How to develop creative writing skills using the Right Brain” on Saturdays for learners from 11.00 to 13.00 at the BAT Centre, Durban.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION
- Board member of the Dancing Pencils Literacy Development Project
- Chairperson fo the Dancing pencils committee in the Durban Area
- Events organizer of the Dancing Pencils Book launch and book handover which is part of the Celebrate Durban Campaign.
Chairperson of the Library committee at school – assist public libraries with holiday programmes and ELITS with Reading Promotion Programmes. Networked and cascaded information on Reading and Writing to educators in neighbouring schools. |
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Profile of Eleanor Langley
Qualifications
Qualified B. Soc Sc. (Social Work) Degree – Natal University.
Post graduate diploma in Social Work and Business Management Diploma
Work Experience
Qualified Social Worker – worked 11 years in Child Welfare setting and 16 years in an Industrial Setting – Transnet National Ports Authority.
Managed Employee Assistance Programmes nationally in 7 South African Ports.
Retired in November 2008.
Writing Successes
Author of 4 publications –
- Contributions to 3 angholoties of Short Stories – (Potpourrie, L’Arbre 1st and 2nd Collections of Short Stories
- Employee Assistance Programmes – a 21st Century Business Solution
Mentorship
Mentor to people interested in Creative Writing –
- Johannesburg region 2006 to 2008
- BAT Centre adult classes 2-4 pm on Saturdays
Hobbies
Lady of Leisure – Granny to a delightful grandson |
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Profile of Xolani Sithole
Xolani Sithole is the Publicist at the BAT (Bartels Art Trust) Centre in Durban. He has been selected to go to the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts and the Cultural Programmes Division (CU) of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a participant for the Cultural Visitors and Arts management Fellows mentoring Programme. This is in Washington in April/May 2009
Xolani feels that he will be perfect for the programme because of his previous experience in the world of the arts He grew up in the rural area called Inanda where he used to mould cows out of clay from the river bed. In high school he achieved a chance of studying Fine Art in Grade 9, 10, 11 & 12 in a multi-racial environment during the era of South African segregation. He later pursued Fine Arts at university level, but dropped out due to peer & financial pressure. Instead he studied Philosophy, Psychology and English -hoping to be a writer with an ambition to re-educate the previously disempowered African about self-pride and the dangers of self-negation. Through his work (as a publicist/ photographer/ graphic designer/ poet and programmes designer) at the BAT Centre; and through his interaction with the local musicians, crafters, writers and visual artists –he has discovered that Arts are the most powerful tool for educating society -especially the youth. Instead of writing books he feels fortunate to be in a position to help develop, empower, educate and assist the local old and young, passionate, aspirant or professional art practitioners. |
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