Young Artists Upcycling for a Creative Cause

As a fallout of Abuja-based Artstier’s EcoSmart workshops, an exhibition highlighting the creativity of young secondary school students with discarded materials will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Lagos to commemorate the International Day of the Environment. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports

Artstier has undoubtedly earned its recent consistent moments in the media spotlight. So, there is no reason to begrudge this Abuja-based online marketing company its hard-earned prominence, which it owes to its contributions as a major stakeholder in the federal capital city’s burgeoning art scene.

Its soon-to-be-held exhibition, featuring over 90 works contrived predominantly from discarded and industrial waste after a series of workshops in seven secondary schools and titled Going Green, eloquently proclaims its emphasis on environmental protection. And this is the reason why the two-day event, which will hold on Tuesday, June 6 and Wednesday, June 7, at the Thought Pyramid Art Gallery in Ikoyi, Lagos, has been scheduled to coincide with the International Day of the Environment.

This Artstier’s project, conceived as EcoSmart “Imagine Green”, was designed as a sensitisation programme that targets young secondary school students with the hope of instilling a healthier environmental mindset in them. These students, who were 47 in number and were drawn from seven schools in Lagos, had participated in workshops in which their art teachers were facilitators. The company’s executive director, Obi Nwaegbe, hinges the premise behind working with teenage students for this project on their impressionability and susceptibility to change. “Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, and it is common sense that we work to get them to imbibe a much more eco-sensitive attitude towards the environment,” he says. 

This project is also motivated by a desire to capitalise on the economic benefits that will accrue from the expanding global demand for upcycling art as an attractive technique of weaning the public off of environmentally destructive behaviours.

Of course, there is also the burden of expectations that rests on Nigeria, with its huge population and its strategic position as Africa’s largest economy, to lead the charge on this globally fundamental discourse.

Before these workshops ever came into the picture, Nwaegbe, as the Artstier’s chief resident artist, had initiated this project and, with the help of his studio assistants, produced over a dozen monumental works made of discarded beverage cans stuck on boards. “When we conceived of the idea of EcoSmart, there were preceding projects from our studios already in motion. One was the quarterly residency programme in which a guest artist was invited to participate in a one-week studio session with other professional members of the community. This happened in our Abuja studios and has culminated in three completed residencies that had two renowned artists from Nigeria and one from the diaspora.”

Then, there was also a clean-up exercise that Nwaegbe embarked on with an Abuja-based non-governmental organisation. It involved the cleaning up of Usman Dam in the city’s Bwari district. “The sheer size of waste generated from that dam was quite befuddling, and when one considered the magnitude of habitat displacement and poisoning that was happening to the creatures in that river, it became imperative that something had to be done. Of course, it had to be considered that these creatures contributed to the livestock business, and therefore human livelihood was also at risk.”

With the expansion of the company’s operations through a workshop, which necessitated partnering with larger establishments with similar visions, it got a grant award from the Ford Foundation and flagged off the EcoSmart project, which is designed to be an annual workshop. 

This was the brief history of how  the EcoSmart “Imagine Green” initiative began as a side project of the Artstier institution and its foray into creating environmentally oriented works out of discarded materials.

Talking about the grant award from the Ford Foundation, it is meant to help facilitate the programme in 2022. “This was after a series of intense scrutinies of our work and progress to ascertain our level of commitment,” Nwaegbe explains. “The Artstier EcoSmart fits into their education policy vision, and we are in partnership with them as a part of their friendly neighbour correspondence.”

Thus, it was sometime late last year that Ecosmart by Artstier’s debut project officially kicked off. This was with the pursuit of approvals from two educational districts in Lagos, namely District V, Amuwo Odofin, and District VI, Oshodi. While District V covers four administrative zones, namely, Ajeromi/Ifelodun, Amuwo-Odofin, Badagry, and Ojo, District VI covers the following three: Ikeja, Mushin, and Oshodi.

On September 5, last year, Artstier’s non-executive director, Mrs Ngozi Odigwe-Igbosuah, initiated correspondence with these districts. It was after the granting of approval that the next stage of the project, which was the school enlistment programme, began. Arstier had embarked on the school enlistment programme using a list of suggested schools from the districts as a guide. This led to visits to 11 schools over a three-week period. “We are working with four schools in district V, namely: Amuwo Senior Secondary School, Amuwo-Odofin Community Secondary School, Kuje Senior Secondary School, and Oluwa Memorial Senior Secondary School,” Nwaegbe discloses.

He criticises the populace’s inclination to leave environmental matters to the government, adding that there is a need for introspection on how the individual contributes to this malaise. This is one reason why he stresses the need to raise the younger generation to religiously value the environment. “Of course, this is a multidisciplinary question that requires multidisciplinary approaches and solutions. What we are doing at EcoSmart is to raise these questions and offer a visual backdrop to a global concern that requires urgent and passionate intervention.”

So far, he describes the exercise as “most exhilarating and quite elucidating,” citing the enthusiasm with which the students and their facilitators, the art instructors from the several schools who participated in this first edition, received it.

As for the exhibition, with its anticipated presentation of more than 90 works, it appears to have surpassed Artstier’s expectations. Hence, Nwaegbe reaffirms EcoSmart’s dedication to preserving these kids’ inventiveness in the process.