Art Education in South African Webinar

Art Education in South African Schools is a panel discussion about Visual Arts Education in Basic and higher Education which includes curriculum, pedagogy, and language.

The panel will be moderated and lead by Dr. Johan Thom, Head of Pretoria University Department of Fine Arts and will include Usha Seejarim (University of Pretoria lecturer), and co-founder of Keleketla! Library; Wits Lecturer Sibongile Bhebhe, and Olga van der Merwe, a Pretoria based FET Phase Visual Arts school teacher.

Dr Johan Thom was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1976. In 2014 Thom completed a PhD in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) on a Cannon Collins Commonwealth Scholarship. Since 2013 Thom has been living and working in Pretoria as a visual artist and a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the Department of Visual Art, University of Pretoria. Thom works across a variety of media including sculpture, video, performance, drawing, printmaking and photography.

Sibongile Bhebhe is currently a PhD candidate with Drama for Life at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her PhD explores the merging of Forum Theatre and Appreciative Inquiry as tools that can be used for transformation, education and socio-political interventions. She is a Teaching Assistant at Drama for Life in the Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) in drama teaching methodology. She has written articles and presented papers on multimodal art pedagogies that empower learners and university student teachers. Outside of academic activities, she uses Forum Theatre techniques to facilitate Gender Based Violence and youth development projects and workshops with communities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Bhebhe has won awards for outstanding Theatre in Social Development and Community work and for best student award in ethnographic research at Wits University, South Africa

Usha Seejarim is a conceptual and socially engaged artist who uses found and common objects to communicate complex and simple ideas around the domestic position of women. Seejarim holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the University of The Witwatersrand (2008) and a B-Tech Degree in Fine Art (1999) from the University of Johannesburg. Seejarim is also a qualified laughter coach.

Olga van der Merwe has been an art teacher at a public High School in Gauteng for the past 16 years. She obtained a BA degree in languages and history and later studied Visual Art at TUT (then Pretoria Technikon) and at Unisa. Before becoming a full-time art teacher, she was a part-time lecturer at TUT’s Art School.

Mail us if you would like to join this virtual panel discussion on 20 May: bookings@javettup.art