Training Is a Beginning
Introducing a skill matters, but it cannot be the full journey. Blind and visually impaired learners need sustained guidance after the first workshop ends.
ABOUT THE BLIND ACADEMY
Training should lead somewhere.
The Blind Academy works with blind and visually impaired people to turn creative training into confidence, professional practice, employment, and greater independence.
8
artists are currently employed by The Blind Academy and continuing to develop their practice.
WHY WE EXIST
The Workshop Cannot Be the End of the Story
Blind people repeatedly seek training and support, but many programmes stop after introducing a skill. Without sustained mentorship, regular practice, materials, employment, and a professional pathway, ability remains unsupported.
Consistency Builds Practice
Regular practice, materials, mentorship, and patient correction help ability become stronger, steadier, and more confident over time.
Opportunity Creates Change
When training is connected to employment and a professional pathway, creative work can become income, dignity, and a way forward.
The Blind Academy was created to close the distance between learning a skill and being able to build a life with it.
FOUNDING STORY
A Place Created Because the Need Kept Appearing
Through his years in publishing and his work supporting artists with disabilities across India, Bobby Thomas saw a pattern that could not be ignored. Blind people approached him again and again looking for professional guidance, creative training, and a genuine pathway forward, but the support structures available to them often had no place for their needs.
In 2025, he founded The Blind Academy to create that place: an organisation built to nurture blind and visually impaired individuals, employ them, and support their growth into more accomplished artists.
The Academy did not begin with a product. It began with people asking for a chance, and one person deciding that those requests should no longer go unanswered.
Our Mission
To equip blind and visually impaired individuals with practical creative skills, patient mentorship, employment, and pathways that strengthen confidence, dignity, and economic independence.
Our Vision
A world in which loss of sight never means loss of purpose, and talent is recognised by the work it can create, not limited by assumptions about disability.
HOW THE MODEL WORKS
Employment and Training Happen Together
The Blind Academy is designed as a continuing pathway, not a one-time class. Artists are welcomed, trained, supported, employed, and given the time to keep refining their work.
Identify and Welcome
We begin by understanding each person, their abilities, their confidence, and the support they need to participate meaningfully.
Develop Practical Skills
Artists build practical creative skills through art concepts, painting, crochet work, craft, candle making, and repeated hands-on practice.
Support the Whole Person
When required, additional support includes mobility training, accessibility training, and computer skills, so each person can grow with confidence.
Employment and Growth
Employment and training happen together. All eight current artists are employed while continuing to refine their work and become more accomplished artists.
Core training
Core training includes art concepts, painting, crochet work, craft, and candle making.
Additional support
When required, artists also receive mobility training, accessibility training, and computer skills support.
Employment with growth
All eight current artists are employed by The Blind Academy while continuing to train, refine their work, and become more accomplished artists.
OUTCOMES AND ARTISTS
The Result Is More Than a Finished Artwork
Each completed piece matters, but the deeper result is what grows around the work: confidence, artistic judgement, paid opportunity, and greater independence.
Confidence
Regular practice helps each artist trust their decisions, their pace, and their ability to keep developing.
Artistic Growth
Each new work becomes part of a longer creative practice, shaped by patience, feedback, and repetition.
Paid Opportunity
Employment gives artists a route to income while they continue learning and producing meaningful work.
Greater Independence
The work supports more than a product. It supports agency, routine, dignity, and a stronger sense of possibility.
8
artists employed by The Blind Academy and continuing to train
Employment is not the finish line. It creates the stability from which each artist can keep learning, creating, and becoming more accomplished.