Getting Creative in West Africa

Greetings from Lagos, Nigeria. I'm in West Africa until Wednesday continuing to work on the Creative Lives project that I've designed to develop the creative industries across East and West Africa for my client, The British Council.

The project's really interesting. The British Council are looking to make connections with many more young Africans (aged between around 18 and 30) and have identified creativity and the so-called "creative industries" (although, I might have a rant later about that particular piece of jargon) as their means to do this. Their first move was smart: starting in Nairobi, they instigated a project called WaPi designed to get lots of young creative people through the doors of the British Council premises - plural, because the project now happens in Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar and Lagos. I was in Accra to help the team there to start their first WaPi event in June. Once these events have started and lots of young people(sometimes as many as two to three thousand per event) are known by the British Council, the question is how do they activate this relationship and develop their creativity?

To answer this question, they got me in to develop a project that works over three years to give training, networking and mentoring opportunities. I went to Nairobi to meet the participating countries' "WaPi Boards" late last year (each country's WaPi events are co-ordinated by a team of people drawn from the local creative sector) to get their ideas about what their needs might be from this sort of programme. Although I called a lot on my experience from working at LIPA and on Goldsmiths' Interactive Media and Arts Admin/Cultural Policy Post Graduate courses. But mostly, I called on my experience of designing and overseeing the BBC Performing Arts Fund. The business plan that I came up with, for a project that we've provisionally titled "Creative Lives" features training, mentoring and networking over the next three years. So, as well as working with the team in Accra to start WaPi, I've come to Lagos (where WaPi has been going around a year) to see their incarnation of this event in action and to work with the Lagos team to make the transition between the WaPi and Creative Lives project. I'm travelling with the undeniable expert of WaPi: Buddha Blaze - the lynchpin of WaPi in Nairobi, and the nearest person I've met to the embodiment of a Malcolm Gladwell style connector
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I haven't been to Lagos since 2000, when I produced the Femi Kuti and Instrumental shows, recorded for Gilles Peterson's show on BBC Radio 1. Landing on the stupidly early flight from Accra (dep: 5.35am!) Murtallah Mohammed airport was so much quieter than I remembered it. And the famous "go-slows" on the flyover between Ikeja and Ikoyi were non-existent. In fact, even though it was barely 8am, the streets were eerily quiet. Kids were even playing football on the highway! When I asked my driver what was going on, he told me that the last Saturday of the month is "Environment Day", when it's illegal to drive a car in the city, and people are encouraged to spend their time cleaning and tidying their homes. We'd got special dispensation thanks to the British Council's diplomatic plates (and the police escort that followed the Land Cruiser that me and Blaze were in).

The WaPi event in Lagos couldn't have been more different to the bustle and mayhem of Nairobi. Security is a big issue in Lagos. The British Council have moved from their old premises in Alfred Renawe Road, to the compound where the UK appointed British Council staff live. The place feels like a cross between Ramsey Street, a municipal library and a South African gated compound. WaPi happens in the garden behind, so from the street, you'd barely know there was anything going on inside apart from the steady stream of young men (and a few young women) entering through the narrow security gates all afternoon. In the garden were two aisles of white plastic garden seating (for around 150 people), sat under hired gazebos. The event was emceed by Fusy and Emem. As a double act, they did a great job keeping the atmosphere up at the event, but it looked like hard work. I went back to the hotel after around an hour to wake Blaze up (he'd got no sleep as he'd stayed on the night before at the Ghana Music Awards until the very end). When I returned with Blaze, it was a lot, lot more lively. Not only were most people standing, but there were customers at the stalls that local makers had set up at the back. The lady selling her own designed slippers had sold a couple, the T-Shirt stall seemed to be doing a roaring trade. I'm going to buy a print on Monday by a cartoonist I met there. There were SO MANY people with creative ideas and creative hunger who wanted to meet people, share what they do, and sell their wares (photographers, writers, film-makers). I really hope our project can help at least some of them. The event was really relaxed on the whole. Nothing like Lagos normally is (on the days when the traffic's about, anyway), so maybe the tight security is a vital part of the mix - to make people feel safe and relax there.