Imbali’s background and educational approach
By Justine Watterson, December 2025
The Imbali Visual Literacy Project was founded in 1988 in response to the lack of art education in Black schools during apartheid-era South Africa. Imbali began by offering weekend art workshops at the Johannesburg Art Gallery to teachers of subjects such as History, Geography, English, and Mathematics, among others. These workshops introduced these teachers to creative arts methodologies and visual literacy, providing them with ideas for integrating these approaches into their lessons.
From the beginning of democracy in 1994, art was included in the curriculum for all school children in South Africa, but most teachers were not trained to teach the subject. So Imbali’s work continued, now working alongside the Department of Education, to equip teachers with accessible creative methodologies for teaching this subject.
Our core belief in teaching art is that LOOKING at artworks—learning to observe, think about, and discuss them—is just as important as the MAKING. These two elements go hand in hand, each deepening and enriching the other.
Imbali works in diverse contexts with teachers of all levels and experience. Over many years, we have offered training workshops that equip them to deliver meaningful and relevant visual art education. These workshops empower educators to guide learners in exploring a wide range of media and techniques for making art. We also put into practice our belief in encouraging critical engagement with visual material to enrich thinking, understanding, problem-solving, and broader social and intellectual development.
To support this endeavour, Imbali has developed a set of art education resource books, ‘Adventuring into Art’. This set is essentially a ‘museum in a box’ and provides educators and learners with an inspiring set of 7 theme-based books to help discover and explore the world of art. These books engage (in an accessible way) with looking at, thinking about, and discussing art, and of course with “making and doing”. These aims are achieved through learners expressing visual ideas of their own while exploring many different materials and techniques.
Imbali’s methodology of making, looking, thinking about, and exploring the visual world is brought to life through the ongoing, two-year, full-time vocational craft art training, based at the Imbali studio in the Bus Factory, Newtown, Johannesburg. This programme equips young people aspiring to work in the creative sector with foundational knowledge in art and design, along with practical skills in textile printing, ceramics, sewing, weaving, and craft entrepreneurship. It not only prepares participants for creative careers but also fosters resourcefulness, critical thinking, and a “can-do” attitude—empowering them to believe that with creativity, anything is possible.
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Images: Copyright Imbali