As a specialist arts bookstore, skills-sharing hub and community of creatives, our intention is to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of the visual arts and all arenas of creativity including printmaking, photography, design and business enterprise. Our motivation is to encourage careers in the arts and creativity, and visitors to our locations who will interact with practitioners who are authorities in their individual arenas. Via our broad range of titles from both local and international publishers on the visual arts and all kinds of creativity, visitors gain an insight into the durability of pursuing creative endeavours. Visitors also gain an insight into arts practice through our galleries and print workshop (based at Arts On Main, Johannesburg), which boasts a thirty-year collaborative relationship with William Kentridge.
Education is the basis of our organisation, with our arts education programme beginning in 2000 when David Krut published the TAXI Art Books Series, the first of its kind in the South African arts publishing landscape. The fifteen TAXI artist monographs delved into the works and practices of the featured practitioners, being the first ever publication on their careers. The Educational Supplement published with each book provides definitive material for the teaching of visual arts to all levels of the community.
The TAXI Art Books are widely acknowledged as having established an awareness of South African arts and artists internationally. The TAXI books are 100% South African-made and set the standard for ongoing publications on local arts, design, architecture and other cultural arenas.
Our concerns regarding literacy in South Africa have also led us into the area of Early Childhood Development in the establishing and support of The Creative Skills Factory, in Stanford, Western Cape, a community-based initiative, which offered extramural creative workshops for children ages 5 to 13.
We are at the service of South African schools to provide media for their art, design or literature syllabus, and also facilitate the research, sourcing and informal mentorships for work experience in a practising arts institution.