Educultural Artists Kenya (ECAK)

Kenya Fri 18-05-2007

Educultural Artists Kenya (ECAK)
By Seth Musindi

Educultural Artists Kenya (ECAK) is a Kenyan non profit making organization founded in the year 2001 by 25 artists who had a common interest in pursuing their potentiality through their talents. The organization’s name reflects education and culture as the core activity for development of our Kenyan diverse cultures.

ECAK is registered at the department of culture. In Sept 2004, ECAK was commissioned to paint 2 murals at Muthini primary school in Machakos each measuring 15 by 30sq ft. The theme for these murals was HIV/AIDS orphans and youths risky behaviors leading to infections.

The second project was in Oct.2005 when ECAK held an art exhibition at The Sarit Centre featuring some of Kenyan prominent visual artists. The title for this exhibition was “RENAISSANCE” with our diverse culture.

In the year 2004, ECAK was commissioned to paint two Murals at Muthini primary school in Machakos. The school’s head teacher requested for Murals which could communicate to parents and pupils about the consequences of orphaned Children from AIDS pandemic.

The school had a lot of orphans who had no support from any quarter and these murals were to appeal to parents and well wishers to come in and assist. Indeed, after composing the concepts for these two murals, ECAK artists produced good work that appealed to one of our local NGOs who started support of the orphans in Muthini within no time.

Our second project was an exhibition at the Bomas of Kenya in August 2004 during the launch of our Kenyan diverse cultures celebrations. This was by courtesy of The Bomas of Kenya whom is one of our collaborators and acknowledges the role ECAK is playing in promotion of our Kenyan cultures through visual arts as well as encouraging artists from different ethnic backgrounds to create own images.

During this Exhibition we realized that most of our Kenyan artists are dwelling much on images from one or two of our tribes forgetting the rest which are equally important. There is hunger for the unknown yet not much effort is being done to encourage artists to research in their past cultural history. Exposing the unknown cultures to visitors as well as our own through visual arts could change the whole structure of visual arts in this country.

We are loosing our originality of art to more westernized cultures and styles which could eventually kill our roots of cultures that are fast fading with new breed of “born city artists”. ECAK major objective is to train artists to be proud of their specific ethnicities and venture into their cultural background so that we would have Exhibitions with a variety of cultures and tastes.

Our third Exhibition was held at The Sarit Centre in November 2005. In this Exhibition, we learned that our Kenyan folks are not being given much of chances to purchase art works from Kenyan artists and dealers. The notion that Kenyan people of African origin don’t value art has reduced interest in us even thinking of exposing our works to them, hence this limits our chances of educating them on its value and promoting sales within.

We some times call our own art works, “Mzungu Art”. This is ridiculous because our art is supposed to be cherished and owned by us first. We sold quite some works to our Kenyan brothers and sisters after giving them a chance to view and ask them about what they thought of this Exhibition.

In December 2005, ECAK Director, Mr. Musindi was in Kakamega where he had a one week workshop of local artists to facilitate on artistic techniques of Mural painting and theatrical performances. After the workshop, there was a performance and a Mural was painted by these artists under Musindi’s instructions.

The subject of this Mural was youths with developments in their local environments. It also exposed these local talents to their own folks who appreciated this new venture of communication. This mural was relevant and educative to the whole community at large.

Posted By: African Colours

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