MOMBASA AND US
Ok, so its Wednesday afternoon and the blog is finally up and running. Just to introduce things, this is the blog that hopes to keep you informed about the goings on at the Urban Wasanii, a workshop based in Mombasa, hosted by Kuona Trust and working with visual artists, film-makers, musicians and a writer.
The idea behind the workshop is to explore and investigate Mombasa’s public spaces, engage with a public audience and work with local communities. We arrived in Mombasa on Sunday evening and spent all day, Monday, in town, chekcing out the two main spaces that have been made available to us to work out off. The first was Fort Jesus- built by the Portuguese in the 16th century to defend the Port of Mombasa, a key stop in the spice-trade route to India. Fort Jesus, has since changed ownership from the Portuguese to the Omani Arabs to the British- who used it as a jail in colonial era Kenya- and finally settled in the hands of the Kenyan Government who have preserved its rich history and that of East African coast as a museum.
The other is the old Law Courts building. This building, opened on 31st December 1902 by Charles Elliot, the British government’s representative in what was then known as The East African Protectorate is now a national monument managed by the National Museums of Kenya. It is in this building that we have set up our ’nerve centre’.
The other places we visited include the French Cultural Centre and the British Council who have allowed us access to some of their resources such as work-spaces, computers and internet and audio visual equipment.
Tuesday morning found us wandering into Barsheba, near Bombolulu, which is home to Ukoo Flani- an ecclectic mix of young musicians, grafitti artistes, fashion designers and street poets- who we have partnered with to bring this urban experience to life. The neighbourhood of Bartheseba welcomed us; walls of shops and homes have been put at our disposal any of our artistes who feel inclined to create in that space have an entire neighbourhood with its feel, its sounds and its people to draw inspiration from.
Today, as everyone sets out on a mission to figure out where they want to work and what they want to work on, we set up this blog to bring you updates and word on all the exciting stuff that we will be doing. It is hoped that all the participating artistes will contribute to this blog and we will be introducing them to you by and by. That said, most of the updates and documentation will be done by Sam Hopkins coupled with lots of random musings, rants and running commentaries by our resident writer, Charles Matathia.
