Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) has hit a milestone by reworking its flagship Supporting Grants Programme to become a potent force for innovation in South Africa’s creative sector. No longer just about funding completed projects, the scheme has shifted gears: it’s now driving early-stage idea development, experimentation, and collaborations that combine culture and commerce in new, sustainable ways.
For over 25 years, BASA’s grant support has played a foundational role—helping seed partnerships between artists, enterprises, and businesses that produced cultural value and social benefit. The recent repositioning puts bold ideas first. Under this new model, creatives are encouraged to test proof-of-concepts and prototypes, refining them so they can grow, attract investment, access markets, and scale. Earlier, the framework tended to favour more established or completed works; now, the emphasis is on risk, iteration, and potential. basa.co.za
A defining feature of the reimagined programme is its insistence on collaboration: the strongest applicants are those that bring together business and creative practitioners in ways that are mutual, rather than transactional. The goal isn’t just arts for arts’ sake, but ventures that can generate both artistic impact and measurable business or societal value, especially where there are urgent economic, social, or environmental challenges. basa.co.za
What sets this approach apart is also the learning framework that BASA is embedding. Projects supported under the new model aren’t isolated experiments—they serve as laboratories for insights, lessons, and scalable practices. The idea is that successful prototypes won’t just stand alone but will inform broader sector strategies, helping other creatives, funders, and businesses replicate what works. basa.co.za
The repositioned Supporting Grants Programme is more than just a funding shift: it’s a strategic renewal of how creativity can intersect with innovation and impact. It acknowledges that for the arts sector to thrive in a fast-changing world, there needs to be room for early failures, for projects that haven’t yet been polished, and for partnerships that stretch beyond traditional models.
By turning funding into seed investment, BASA has created space for risk-taking, experimentation, and ultimately, transformation. Creatives are not just content producers; they are innovators. And in South Africa’s evolving creative economy, that stance may be exactly what’s needed to push boundaries, build resilience, and forge new paths forward.
