Correctional Services opens nine arts galleries to the public for Corrections Week

All nine of the Department of Correctional Services’ arts and crafts galleries open to the public this week, and the work on the walls and the tables was made by people serving sentences in the country’s prisons.

The galleries at Goodwood, Makhanda, Pietermaritzburg, Empangeni, Kokstad, Kgosi Mampuru II, Leeuwkop, Groenpunt and Klerksdorp will be open from 20 to 26 September 2026. Visitors may view and buy the products, which are produced under the department’s Self-Sufficiency and Sustainability Programme. Every purchase goes back into rehabilitation and skills development.

Minister of Correctional Services Dr Pieter Groenewald launches Corrections Week 2026 at the Goodwood Art Gallery at the Goodwood Correctional Facility in Cape Town on Monday, 21 September, at 09h00 for 09h30. The week runs under the theme: Correcting Offending Behaviour, Restoring Dignity and Rebuilding Communities through Arts and Crafts.

What the week is meant to do

The department states that the campaign has five aims. It wants to increase public understanding of rehabilitation through arts and crafts. It wants community participation in reintegration and crime prevention. It wants stronger partnerships and market linkages for products made by offenders. And it wants to promote social reintegration, alongside the broader goal of public awareness and understanding of the correctional system itself.

That last aim is the one a reader can test. Most South Africans know a prison exists near them. Far fewer have seen what comes out of one, or met the person who made it. The galleries put the product, and the skills behind it, in front of the public for a week.

The department frames the purchase plainly. Buying an item supports rehabilitation and skills development, restores dignity and helps rebuild communities. That is the department’s own description of what the money does, and it is the reason the galleries are being opened rather than kept behind a gate.

The Garden Project winner

On the same afternoon, Groenewald travels to the Malmesbury Correctional Facility on the West Coast to announce the national winner of the department’s Garden Project.

The project is aimed at improving the living environment and the standard of gardens of correctional officials who live in official departmental accommodation. The department states that it promotes pride, wellness and sustainability.

That is a different kind of story from the galleries, and it matters for a different reason. The people whose homes are being judged are the staff, not the inmates. A well-kept garden outside departmental housing is a small thing on a national balance sheet. It is not a small thing to the official who lives there.

The announcement is scheduled for 13h00 for 13h30 at Malmesbury.

What is on the record, and what is not

This account rests on the government’s own media advisory for the two events. It sets out the theme, the dates, the venues, the nine gallery locations and the stated aims of the campaign. It does not list the individual works on sale, the prices, the opening hours at each gallery, or the names of the ten other facilities whose galleries are not part of the nine.

It also does not state how much the Self-Sufficiency and Sustainability Programme has raised to date, or how many offenders have moved through its training. Those are the figures that would tell a reader how much of this is working. The advisory does not carry them.

The department’s own framing of the week is that it is about public awareness and understanding. The galleries are the mechanism it has chosen. Whether South Africans walk through the doors between 20 and 26 September is the part the department cannot schedule.

Media attending either event are asked to confirm with Nandipha Gxabuza on 082 835 2053. Interview requests for the minister go to Ms Euné Wessels on 079 492 5234.

Source: South African Government (www.gov.za), Minister Pieter Groenewald launches Corrections Week 2026 and announce National Garden Project winner, 21 Sept, https://www.gov.za/news/media-advisories/government-activities/minister-pieter-groenewald-launches-corrections-week