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::OTHER NEWS::
LE Newsletter -
August 19, 2010
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Bringing Art Into Kenya’s Schools
Source: www.globeandmail.com -
James Bradshaw
(August 17, 2010) A group of enterprising young
Canadians is Kenya-bound
in January, trying to help bring
back what they fear the country has sorely lacked in recent
years: arts education.
Their project is the first for a new volunteer-driven initiative
called
Artbound,
which was publicly launched Tuesday. It’s committed to putting
arts back into global curricula by building dedicated arts
schools that piggyback on the existing educational networks
being built by Canadian charity Free The Children, run by Craig
and Marc Kielburger.
Already, those driving it are describing it as a potential
Doctors Without Borders for arts education, with a
made-in-Canada tag.
In January, about three quarters of the 20-member Artbound
committee will travel to Kenya’s southwestern Maasai Mara region
and roll up their sleeves to actually build the school, to be
housed in a separate building on the campus of an all-girls
boarding secondary school that Free the Children is currently
building. It’s that dirt-under-the-fingernails approach that
co-founder Jason Dehni, a 37-year-old VP at Scotiabank Group, is
thinking of with pride when he labels the project “active
philanthropy.”
“We wanted to be part of something that engages us beyond just
simply holding a fundraiser, just simply attending a gala or
cutting a cheque,” Dehni says. “We all felt there’s something
missing in our community involvement.”
Artbound is Dehni’s idea, since backed by co-founders Amanda
Alvaro, Katie Telford and Marcello Cabezas.
They have since been joined by a crew of high-flying
thirtysomethings (plus a few in their early 40s) who have a
history of community engagement and believe in the arts as a way
to spur creativity and ennoble young minds, but also seed
commercial opportunities. CTV’s Seamus O’Regan has joined up as
honorary chair, while activist and former supermodel Dayle
Haddon has lent her support as the project’s global ambassador,
lending the outfit their star power.
The Kenyan project, at a cost of $150,000, will build, stock and
operate the arts school for two years, after which Free The
Children will take over. But the committee is aiming to
overshoot that fundraising target in order to begin work on
future builds tentatively earmarked for Haiti, India and
China .
So far, the Kenyan initiative has attracted corporate
sponsorship from Scotiabank, Horizons ETF and CTV, and Artbound
will hold a large-scale fundraising party in September. The
private Toronto all-girls academy St. Clement’s School has also
joined up as an educational partner.
In 2003, arts education suffered a major setback in Kenya even
as the Kenyan government took a major step forward for
education. The government made primary education mandatory and
free – but cut arts programs as non-priorities. And while Free
the Children has built some 650 schools worldwide, 70 of them in
Kenya, none provide targeted arts education.
“These are some of the brightest kids who wouldn’t otherwise
have had access to high school, let alone an arts education,”
says Alvaro, 32, a founder of Narrative Advocacy Media.
Artbound seeks to give the students an outlet to perform and to
sell their works, both locally and online, with proceeds poured
back into community programs that provide necessities such as
clean water and
health care. There will also be
scholarships and support for students after graduation if they
choose to pursue the arts.
Dehni is adamant that Artbound will not export Canadian cultural
values, but instead install a locally inspired curriculum.
Whatever the tradition, he feels arts schools are unequivocally
important.
“The arts serve another purpose beyond entertaining us and
enriching us: They serve a social good,” Dehni says. “The arts
have the power to equip those who are underprivileged to
actually make a living.” |
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::LANGFIELD
ENTERTAINMENT:: ENTERTAINMENT NEWS WITH A CANADIAN TWIST::
