SPRINTS x
TEDxJohannesburg

Use these awesome visuals.
Act for climate now.

About SPRINTS

Countdown, TED’s initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, and Fine Acts – a global creative studio for social impact, joined forces to kick off a series of SPRINTS creative bootcamps on climate change around the world. The goal: to engage local artists to envision what a better climate future looks like. Today, this has grown into a global collaboration with 22 TEDx events.

SPRINTS is an original format, developed by Fine Acts – a creative bootcamp where visual artists (illustrators, graphic designers, and typographers) are briefed on a topic by experts, and then have 48 hours to produce an artwork on that specific issue. Throughout the process, artists are supported by a pool of mentors. On the second day, the developed works are presented internally. Each edition of SPRINTS also ends with a public pop-up exhibition, revealed shortly after the bootcamp.

Furthermore, all visuals are then published under an open license, so that activists, nonprofits and educators globally can use or adapt them in their work. Selected works are featured on Fine Acts’ global platform for socially-engaged art –TheGreats.co, where they join The Climate Collection – a unique vault with open-licensed illustrations on climate change, with a focus on hope and solutions.

Our event in Johannesburg

In 2023, we once again partnered with TEDxJohannesburg – one of the most prominent TEDx events in South Africa, with its first edition dating back to 2009. The amazing team of TEDxJohannesburg hand-picked a powerful group of 7 local visual artists, organized a creative bootcamp and a public exhibition, and curated and produced the brilliant collection below.

For many of the participating artists it was the first time that they were thinking deeply about climate change, say the organizers. So SPRINTS was a learning process – but also a process that produced a deep feeling of camaraderie, with the artists coming together as a group, and truly sharing the experience.

The exhibition also featured the works developed during our previous collaboration with TEDxJohannesburg in 2021, as back then due to pandemic restrictions the SPRINT and artwork reveal had to be done online.

The exhibition

Reflections

“For the internal presentation, where artists showed the rest of the group their final works, we had planned a two hour session, but spent three full hours discussing the works and the creative process. And, at the exhibition – it was again difficult to get people – audience and artists, to go home.”

— Kelo Kubu, organizer, TEDxJohannesburg

“Talking about impact – for many of them, it’s the first time that they’re thinking deeply about climate change. And they have to interpret what they’re learning in their works. And then, just the feeling of camaraderie when they come together, and share this experience with each other.”

— Thati Mokgoro, organizer, TEDxJohannesburg

“At the exhibition, we asked artists to say something about their work. But then more and more people came, and they just kept explaining. And at some point, people came with their kids. And the artists took the kids around to explain what the works mean, talk a bit about climate change. This was so nice.”

— Kelo Kubu, organizer, TEDxJohannesburg