Henriette Weber: Award-Winning Service and Leadership through Music

Henriette Weber, Director of UWC's Centre of Performing Arts, has been honoured with the prestigious Ministerial Youth Excellence Award for Service and Leadership.

Weber is pleased and grateful to receive this award, and for the experiences she has had since arriving at the University of the Western Cape in 1986 as a music student, and returning to head the Centre five years ago.

“I’m extremely humbled by this award, and I am looking forward to doing much more in the community and with the Centre at UWC,” she says.

Weber, who is originally from Grassy Park but now lives in Green Point, started her career as an accompanist in the Human Movement Science Department at the Bellville College of Education in 1989.

Over the next fifteen years (1990-2005) she was appointed by the Western Cape Education Department as a music instrumental teacher, teaching at primary and high schools in Mitchell’s Plain, Gugulethu and Montana. She managed the Outreach and Education Programme at the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra (2003-2011)  prior to her appointment at UWC.

In 2011, Weber started at UWC, where she succeeded Emeritus Professor Nicholas Basson (who was her organ lecturer as a student) as the Director of the Centre for the Performing Arts.

She has made it her mission, as director, to focus on community engagement, lifelong learning and distance learning – exemplified in the accredited music courses offered at the CPA, which provide quality music education to the many talented community music practitioners from financially marginalised communities of the Western Cape.

In addition to that, Weber started the UWC Jazz Combo, which is extremely popular in the Cape Town area, launched the UWC Chamber Music Institute with the Arianna String Quartet from the University of Missouri, St Louis, and has guided many talented students through their endeavours.

Last year, she received the Department of Cultural Affairs Minister's Award for Outstanding Achievement for Youth in the Arts, acknowledging her achievements and those of the Centre for the Performing Arts.

For more information about UWC’s Centre for Performing Arts, please contact Henriette Weber on 076 4011 667 or via email at hweber@uwc.ac.za