East Africa Summit 2013

Happy birthday GoDown Art centre!  It’s now ten years since inception and indeed you are a testimony to be emulated: if you want to run fast you will run alone, while if you want to go far you need to work with others.  You have indeed gone far and wide in shaping the art industry by providing the much needed platform for artists to learn, share and co-create while finding lasting synergies. 

I was honored to be part of the celebrations which were well organized from day one. I was able to connect with like-minded creative’s from different genres of art such as digital artists, sculptures, painters, curators, script writers, choreographer just mention but a few. I also learned a lot from the moderators and the panelist who shared their vast knowledge in ICT, policies development, economics etc.

My ten take-away during the summit are as follows:

• Artist needs to collaborate and co-create.
• It is important for an artist to adapt to the changing trends notably Information Communication Technology and different policies that surround our work.
• We need to clearly understand and define the markets that we operate in.
• An artist guild would help shape creative economy and ensure quality of work produced across the board.
• In the near future there’s going to be overwhelming need for content especial in the ICT sector!
• As artists we should think on uploading creative contents as much as we continue downloading.
• The question we need to ask ourselves is how can we involve other sectors to help us reach our agendas
• For an artist to prosper they should join artist networks like arterial…
• The big challenge artist’s face is management of their work, and generally of the sector. In some countries like Tanzania, it’s is costly to being an artist from abroad. This poses a great threat to the East African community working together. The action point is for the entire artist network to come together and make our voices heard in lobbying for some punitive policies to be removed.
• Each individual artist should think on how to pass the skills to the young generation.

I thank The GoDown for having achieved a great milestone, and I look forward to the next summit and wish you all the best in the next ten years road map.