Bohlabela Arts Hub

From a borrowed room to a working studio with three kilns and a loom.
Bohlabela began the way most good things in the lowveld do — slowly, and around a table. A handful of weavers and leatherworkers had been meeting in a borrowed church hall, sharing tools and trading techniques, long before there was a name for what they were doing.

When Kulani arrived, it did not arrive with a plan. It arrived with months of listening. What the makers wanted was not charity, but a room of their own — a place to practise, to fail quietly, and to learn from someone who had walked the path before them.

Today the hub runs three disciplines side by side. Apprentices sign on for a two-year cycle and are paid a monthly stipend while they train, so they can give their full attention to the craft rather than the next meal. The room is rarely silent: a loom clatters in one corner, a kiln ticks as it cools in another.

Every piece that leaves the studio is named and dated. It carries the maker’s name, the studio they trained in, and the year they joined — a small act of authorship that, for many, is the first time their work has been signed at all.