William Stewart (Bill) Ainslie, South African artist and founder of several art training projects, was born in Bedford, Eastern Cape as a descendent of an early British settler who had arrived in the Cape Colony in 1833. A successful and talented graphic artist and sculptor himself, he was keenly aware of the damage Apartheid inflicted on local art. To combat this Ainslie raised funds to buy a house and established the Johannesburg Art Foundation in 1982, where gardeners alongside women of leisure, and domestic workers as well as Sunday painters received tuition.

He was also instrumental in the founding of several other centres of art instruction, like the Federated Union of Black Arts (FUBA) in 1976; the Thupelo Art Project in 1985...