MAKING IT! x WEYLANDTS

Over two days, a considered gathering of makers, designers, founders, and cultural thinkers came together under a shared understanding: that building within the creative economy requires more than talent. It asks for resilience, collaboration, and a willingness to keep shaping, even when the outcome is uncertain.

Hosted by the Craft and Design Institute in Johannesburg’s Kramerville Design District, Making It! 2026 unfolded across a network of partner venues, each hosting a series of talks, discussions, and workshops. Weylandts was proud to be among them, hosting three conversations as part of the programme at our Kramerville showroom.

This year carried particular weight, marking 25 years of sustained commitment to South Africa’s creative sector. What began in 2001 with 63 makers has grown into a network of over 8,300 enterprises across all nine provinces.

But beyond the numbers, there is something quieter at play, a continued investment in people – in the belief that, given the right support, access, and skills, creative work can move from fragile beginnings into something lasting.

For Weylandts, the alignment is instinctive. The conversations held across Making It! echoed a long-standing belief that design is driven by urgency and intention. That materiality, craftsmanship, and time are not constraints, but essential parts of the process. To stand within this space was not simply to observe, but to recognise a shared language, one that values depth over display, and longevity over excess.

Woven through the programme were six guiding themes: heritage, culture, and craftsmanship; innovation in design and making; sustainable and responsible practice; market access and business growth; branding, storytelling, and digital presence; and the shared language of skills, collaboration, and intellectual property. Rather than sitting in isolation, these themes moved in conversation with one another forming a living framework of how things are made, shared, and sustained. Weylandts Kramerville hosted three conversations as part of the programme:

Against Trends: Consumer Behaviour & Designing Beyond the Cycle, a clear tension surfaced, the pull between relevance and longevity. Moderated by Bielle Bellingham, with insights from Khensani Mohlatlole and Ntombi Khambule, the conversation moved beyond the surface of trends and into something more enduring.

What emerged was a shift in the perspective of trends – a call to understand them without being defined by them, to create work that holds its relevance beyond the immediacy of the moment. There was an insistence on designing with intention, allowing objects and ideas the space to settle into time.

Embodied Futures, presented by Design Week South Africa, expanded the conversation outward. Guided by Monika Bielskyte and moderated by Simone Shultz, it offered a perspective that felt both speculative and grounded.

Here, the future was not abstract. It was something shaped by culture, by lived experience, and by the choices made in the present. Design became a force of direction, giving shape to possibility and form to what comes next.

In The Shape of Us, Bielle Bellingham, Margot Molyneux and Mpho Vackier turned inward. The discussion unfolded around identity, how it is held, expressed, and translated into the work we create. It was a reminder that design is never detached. It carries traces of place, memory, and perspective, shaping objects and spaces that feel both personal and collective.

As Erica Elk reflected, the significance of Making It! lies in its ability to dissolve isolation. To be in a room with others who have built, failed, adapted, and continued is to recognise that the process is shared. And in that recognition, something shifts. The challenges feel less singular. The path forward, while still complex, becomes more visible.