A conversation with OYASAF’s head of education on art literacy
Art literacy begins with the ability to look closely. Before students learn the names of artists, movements, or materials, they learn to notice colour, texture, gesture, scale, symbolism, and the emotions an artwork can produce. In Nigeria, that process also opens a path into history, identity, community, and the many ways African artists interpret the world.
For OYASAF, the Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation, education is closely connected to access. A collection becomes more meaningful when schoolchildren, teachers, researchers, families, and first-time visitors feel equipped to engage with it. The foundation’s work brings together art appreciation, cultural learning, creative practice, and conversations around Nigerian and African visual culture.
In this conversation, OYASAF’s Head of Education discusses how art literacy programmes can make looking an active skill, how educators can support confident interpretation, and why encounters with original artworks matter in a digital age. The discussion also considers the role of museums, schools, artists, and families in developing lifelong cultural participation.
Making looking an active skill
What does art literacy mean in an educational setting?
The Head of Education describes it as more than recognising famous paintings or memorising art-historical terms. Art literacy is the ability to observe carefully, ask questions, form interpretations, and support those interpretations with evidence from an artwork. It includes visual vocabulary, but it also includes confidence: learners should feel that their responses are worth expressing, even when they are still developing.
This approach gives students permission to begin with what they see. A child might notice a repeated pattern in a textile-inspired composition, a particular posture in a sculpture, or the contrast between a quiet background and a vivid figure. From that first observation, a facilitator can introduce ideas about technique, symbolism, social history, or the artist’s context. Learning grows from attention rather than intimidation.
How do programmes turn that idea into practice?
An effective session combines looking, discussion, and making. Students may spend time with an artwork, describe its formal qualities, compare different interpretations, and then respond through drawing, writing, collage, movement, or another creative activity. The making stage does not replace critical thinking; it helps learners understand decisions about composition, materials, and expression through their own experience.
This method also serves different learning styles. Some participants speak readily, while others communicate more comfortably through images or written reflection. A well-designed art education programme creates several points of entry, ensuring that a student does not need advanced language skills or prior museum experience to take part.
Connecting artworks to Nigerian life
Art appreciation becomes richer when artworks are presented within the histories and communities that shaped them. The Head of Education emphasises that Nigerian art cannot be reduced to a single visual tradition. It includes established forms, experimental practices, regional perspectives, personal narratives, political commentary, and responses to changing social conditions.
A painting, photograph, or sculpture can therefore lead to many kinds of learning. Students may explore how artists represent family, faith, migration, labour, gender, celebration, memory, or the built environment. They can ask whose stories have been preserved, whose viewpoints have been overlooked, and how artistic choices influence the way a subject is understood.
OYASAF’s collection resources support this broader view by bringing traditional, modern, and contemporary works into the same educational conversation. Seeing connections across periods helps learners understand that African art is not fixed in the past. It is a living field shaped by innovation, debate, and continuing dialogue with local and global culture.
From museum visit to meaningful dialogue
A museum or foundation visit has the greatest impact when it is prepared and followed up. Before a visit, teachers can introduce a few broad themes without turning the experience into a lesson in correct answers. Students might be asked to think about how artists communicate an idea without using words, or how materials affect the character of an artwork.
During the visit, facilitators can use open-ended prompts: What do you notice first? What details support your interpretation? What might be happening beyond the frame? How does the artwork make you feel, and what could explain that response? These questions encourage evidence-based discussion while leaving room for different perspectives.
| Art literacy focus | Learning activity | Skill developed | Possible follow-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close observation | Describe lines, shapes, colours, and textures | Visual attention | Write a detailed artwork description |
| Interpretation | Offer and defend different readings | Critical thinking | Compare two responses to the same work |
| Cultural context | Research a theme, place, or artistic tradition | Historical awareness | Create a short classroom presentation |
| Creative response | Make an artwork inspired by a technique or idea | Experimentation | Display student work with artist statements |
| Reflection | Discuss how opinions changed after looking longer | Self-awareness | Keep a visual learning journal |
The Head of Education sees dialogue as central to this process. A facilitator should guide the group without controlling every response. When students hear one another’s ideas, they discover that interpretation can be communal, respectful, and open to revision. That experience has value beyond the gallery because it strengthens listening, reasoning, and the ability to engage with complexity.
Supporting teachers as cultural educators
Teachers play a decisive role in whether art education becomes an occasional activity or a sustained part of learning. Many educators are eager to use artworks in the classroom but may feel uncertain about leading discussions, especially when they do not have formal training in art history. Professional development can help them replace the pressure to provide immediate answers with strategies for investigation.
Useful training includes methods for questioning, age-appropriate visual analysis, inclusive classroom dialogue, and connections between art and other subjects. A work can support lessons in history, literature, social studies, geography, design, or civic education. This interdisciplinary approach makes art relevant without treating it as merely decorative.
Resources should also reflect the realities of Nigerian schools. Activities need to be adaptable to different class sizes, available materials, technology access, and timetables. A strong programme offers structure while allowing teachers to localise examples and invite students to connect artworks with their own surroundings.
Expanding access beyond the gallery
Art literacy should not depend entirely on living near a major cultural institution. Digital collections, online talks, school partnerships, printed learning materials, and community-based activities can extend the reach of museum education. OYASAF’s official foundation website provides a point of connection for audiences seeking information about the collection, programmes, artists, and the foundation’s wider cultural work.
Digital access cannot fully reproduce the physical encounter with an artwork. Scale, surface, spatial relationships, and material presence often become clearer in person. Yet online resources can prepare learners for a visit, support teachers who cannot travel, and allow students to revisit works after a programme has ended.
The Head of Education also highlights the importance of welcoming first-time visitors. Clear interpretation, friendly facilitation, accessible language, and opportunities for participation can help people see cultural spaces as places for them. When children return with parents, siblings, or classmates, an educational visit can become part of a wider culture of shared discovery.
Building confidence through creative participation
A central purpose of art literacy is to help learners trust their capacity to think. Students who are encouraged to interpret images may become more attentive to advertising, media, public spaces, and the visual messages that surround them every day. They learn that images are constructed and that viewers can examine how meaning is made.
Creative activities reinforce that agency. When students make a collage from familiar materials, reinterpret a local scene, or create a visual response to an artwork, they move from passive observation to active communication. The goal is not to produce polished replicas. It is to help learners recognise that artistic choices carry intention and that their own choices can carry meaning too.
These experiences can also support emotional learning. Art offers a language for discussing memory, belonging, conflict, hope, and personal experience when direct conversation feels difficult. A thoughtful facilitator protects that openness while ensuring that discussion remains respectful and attentive to different backgrounds.
Turning art encounters into lasting habits
For art education to have a lasting effect, programmes need continuity. A single visit can spark curiosity, but repeated opportunities allow vocabulary, confidence, and cultural knowledge to develop. Schools can build simple routines around an artwork of the week, student-led gallery talks, visual journals, classroom exhibitions, or creative responses connected to local history.
Families have a role as well. Adults do not need specialist knowledge to discuss art with children. They can ask what a child noticed, which part of an artwork feels important, or what title they would choose. These conversations communicate that looking carefully is worthwhile and that cultural participation belongs in everyday life.
The Head of Education’s message is clear: art literacy is a shared practice. Foundations, museums, teachers, artists, parents, and students all contribute to an environment where Nigerian and African art can be encountered with curiosity and respect. Through sustained programmes, collections become more than repositories of objects; they become places where people learn to see themselves and their world with greater attention.
Explore OYASAF’s programmes, collection highlights, artist profiles, and educational initiatives, then bring one artwork into a classroom, study group, or family conversation. A closer look can be the beginning of a deeper relationship with Nigerian art and the histories it continues to reveal.