Rwandan artists who attended the 7th East African Arts Summit held last month at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. Photo/Margaretta wa Gacheru
The recently ended East African Arts Summit held in Nairobi was historic. It wasn’t the first time artists from the East African Community states were coming together, courtesy of the GoDown Arts Centre (and several supportive donors).
It was the seventh summit of its kind, since the GoDown was born in 2003 and shortly thereafter, came up with a plan to strengthen the “creative economy” of the region as well as promote and encourage artistic initiatives among the EAC member states, including Rwanda, which has only sent representatives to the summit since 2009.
Still, it was the first time that more than 100 artists and stakeholders in the industry stayed glued to their seats for the three days the summit was held.
They also listened attentively to a panel of community leaders like the chief economist and CEO of Commercial Bank of Africa Isaac Awuondo, the social activist and founder chair of Inuka Trust John Githongo, cultural activist and former chair of the Kenya Cultural Centre who’s now with the Africa Leadership Centre, Dr Mshai Mwangola, and ICT expert and founder of the website www.creativecommons.co.ke Alex Gakuru.
“The idea was to start off the summit by putting our priorities into a broad socio-political and economic context,” said Joy Mboya, managing director of the GoDown, explaining why the first afternoon’s theme was Where is East Africa Headed?’, which seemed a far cry from artists’ primary interests.
But what was clear from the word go was that artists and cultural stakeholders were hungry to get to know their counterparts from other areas in the region and even other sectors of the creative arts.
Present at the forum were poets, prose writers and publishers as well as dancers, musicians and painters. There were also fashion designers, a few art dealers and even puppeteers who were there to hear what the GoDown administrators had to say about the way forward for the East African arts.
Inspiring
It was an inspiring occasion all round, especially as the summit started off with the celebration of the GoDown’s 10th anniversary.
Mboya explained the idea of a multidisciplinary art centre strategically situated in Kenya’s capital city had been percolating for some time before 2003.
It was only that year that the GoDown managed to secure funding from Ford Foundation and find the venue — a sprawling rundown godown on the far edge of Nairobi’s city centre and a site easily accessible by public means.
A lot of repairs and renovations were required to get the dilapidated warehouse in shape, and eventually house studio space (for visual artists like Patrick Mukabi, Gakunju Kaigwa and Maggie Otieno among others), rehearsal and performance space (for countless contemporary dance and theatre groups), commercial space (for music producing firms like Ketubal and film making firms like Medeva) and even schools (like Nairobits for computer learners and an annex for the Kenya Conservatoire of Music).
To get this done, the Americans, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch and British as well as a number of corporations chipped in financially, while volunteers such Dr Eric Krystall and Harsita Waters gave their time and meeting space especially during the initial phase of planning and preparing the GoDown’s vision and policy, as well as its implementation.
According to Mboya, cultivating a regional arts summit wasn’t initially in the overall plan. But after the first year’s success, it became clear the Godown had a larger role to play in strengthening the cultural scene in the region.
Evolving vision
With its evolving vision clearly focused on strengthening the region’s creative economy, it wasn’t difficult to persuade donors to appreciate the value of a regional arts summit.
This year’s summit attracted cultural practitioners from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya.
“Eventually we hope to have creatives from all the countries in the region,” said Judy Ogana, who works with Mboya as her general manager, and has also been actively involved in recently launching the fourth Kenya Arts Diary, a collection of more than 52 mainly Kenyan visual artists into a January to December calendar for 2014.
“Next year we hope to have our first East African art diary,” said Ogana.
It won’t be difficult, she added, given that numerous visual and performing artists were on hand at the Summit, including Dr Lilian Nabulime and Nathan Kiwere from Uganda, Carole Karemera from Rwanda and Johannes van Esch, from Tanzania who is also one of the organisers of the just ended East African Art Biennale.
But the participants were not merely attendees at talks given by professionals, they were also called by the summit’s MC, publisher and Kiswahili scholar Dr Kimani Njogu to be active participants in discussions on topics close to artists’ hearts — like what possibilities are open to them in future and what are the best strategies for overcoming the various obstacles that artists meet in their everyday lives.
By breaking down the larger assembly into smaller working groups, the discussions among artists and cultural stakeholders across the region provided fodder for further strategising about how to advance by working together both regionally and by the cross-fertilisation of groups with one another.
Thinking broadly
And while controversial issues like cultural policy and national laws were discussed among the groups, so was the itemising of all the regional training institutes.
The list that was generated is meant to inspire artists to think in broader terms and take advantage of training programmes across the region, from Nairobi and Kigali to Kampala and Dar es Salaam.
“We in Rwanda are still weak in establishing a diversity of cultural institutions, the likes of which we see especially in Kenya and Uganda,” said Carole Karemera, Rwandan actress, writer and long standing friend of the Godown who came to Nairobi with four countrymen and women.
“We’ve gained a great deal of inspiration from all that we’ve seen at the summit, and we feel energised and encouraged to redouble our efforts in our country.”
By the end of the summit, virtually all the artists present concurred with Dr Mwangola when she said that the biggest challenges that regional artists face is the misunderstanding of culture and the arts on the part of politicians, who either ignore them altogether or don’t appreciate that culture forms the foundation of any society.
It also has untapped potential for generating economic growth if given even minimal support from national governments.
“They often don’t understand that by strengthening the cultural sector of their countries, they can advance their own creative economies and thus grow their countries’ GDP,” said Dr Mwangola.
Noting that it has also been well documented in numerous United Nations reports on the creative economy (which few politicians actually read), Mwangola’s passionate appeal to Summit participants struck a sympathetic chord.
She herself is a world-acclaimed performing artist as well as a respected scholar, but she was just one good reason why regional artists and cultural stakeholders stuck like glue to their seats throughout the three-day summit.
Offering hope and the possibility that the way forward for East African artists is bright, most have already marked their calendars with a view to returning to the next East African Arts Summit in 2015.
