By Tajudeen Sowole
A fragrance of art gallery as
resource space, across disciplines, is in the air at Biodunomolayo Gallery
where creativity is being used as a pedestal in creating responsible
leadership. Across ages, the gallery engages participants in intellectualising
and dissecting of art contents as a an extension of sappropriating creativity
beyond the regular space.
The gallery, for the past one decade, has been
articulating its mission via a platform known as Young @ Art. Being a
consistent space that has a firm root in Nigeria's vocabulary of non-formal
creative activities such as workshops and mentorships, Young @ Art, led
by artist and gallery owner needs little or no introduction. But the insurgence
of interest, which is also generating expansion of the space into diverse
disciplines should be of interest to keen observers.
"Beyond mentorship in art, we are
coaching young adults and children on the need to start seeing leadership as a
responsibility," Omolayo enthuses during a chat with his guest inside the
gallery. "Leadership is
responsibility, not reliability." He states that Young @ Art has
gone beyond just teaching art, but
adding the disciplines of statistics and mathematics "in creating art to
ensure that a child has a total development." He argues that when a child
is developed in creativity, "solving problems as an adult in leadership
position is easier."
The volume of activities going inside
Biodunomolayo Gallery, a top floor facility at City Mall, Onikan, Lagos, during
a visit, clearly suggest an expansion of the mentorship programmes of the
Omolayo-led group. And when he discloses
that "Young @ Art is currently running through out the year,"
he makes one shifts to the edge of a seat.
For anyone who has been tracking the project since inception, Omolayo's
statement generates curiousity. It started as a seasonal programes scheduled
for long school holiday period, a calendar that coincides with summer period of
the northern hemisphere. And for quite a long period since incepetion, Young
@ Art has sustained the programming.
Now redesigned to run through out the year -
including academic holiday periods - quite a number of other disciplines have
been included. One of such he says is consulting for secondary schools in
effective management of excursions. "Rather than just take pupils and
students to visit the museums, we expose them to contemporary art here where
they meet artists at work and experience the fun of creating art."
Extending the gallery's service in creativity resource to secondary schools, he
says, is inspired by a British Council, Lagos experience last year. Through the
mentorship and skill acquisition programmes of Biodunomolayo Gallery, the
British Council had, last year, engaged select secondary schools across Nigeria
in art workshop for art teachers.
As positive and progreesional the expansion of
the gallery's mentorship workshops are, there comes challenges of keeping pace
with the growh. For example, how does the gallery manage its facililitators who
are engaged on part time? "We now have facilitators that are staff; under
our full employment," Omolayo discloses. In fact, the facilitators
"are trained in gallery management, handling of kids." The
facilitators, who are "ten in number, are also trained to train other
professionals."
Participants in different segments of Young
@ Art include children, young adults as well as professionals from non-art
fields who seek to acquire skills in the creative and culture sectors. Apart
from the programmes for children and young adults, the other segment include Sweet
Art for women as well as supportive birthday event in art exhibition for
patrons.
As the new school session drew near, the
gallery organised art exhibition that showed the works of children participants
produced during the long holiday period.
In the previous years, Young at Art had
featured celebrities that inspired the young participants. Among such note able
names are Duke Asidere, a professional artist, Engr. Yemisi Shyllon, Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi
and Funke Akindele a.k.a Jenifa who mentored the children.
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