Victoria Okoye, Lagos Community Manager
In marginalized communities like Ajegunle and Oshodi, the BornTroWay Creative Arts Project is empowering and spotlighting youth art creativity. The project started in Ajegunle, considered one of Lagos’ harshest slum settlements. But the project capitalizes on the contradictions within this space: Ajegunle, like other blighted areas, is often typecast for its challenges and labeled a slum, an informal and marginalized community. However, it is also a thriving place where some of the country’s premier athletes and performers have grown up: There’s Emmanuel Amuneke, a former footballer who represented Nigeria in the 1994 World Cup, and also Don Jazzy, the president and founder of the major music label Mo Hits Records, which produces successful music acts who have reached national and international fame. Despite its social and economic challenges, there is creativity — often untapped — in such communities.
The organization’s name is a play on words; the Nigerian pidgin phrase born troway (“born throw away”) refers to the alienation and marginalization of these youth from mainstream society. The project’s aim is in celebrating the talent of young people in these communities, and giving them the opportunity to express their unique voice.
“I always think words matter a lot in terms of inspiring and projecting feelings and reality,” says Ilaria Chessa, BornTroWay’s co-founder — who, along with international music artist Ade Bantu, founded the organization in 2011. In their brainstorming sessions, she says they discussed how kids from these deprived communities are treated as born troway — left there, abandoned, for life to take care of them. “Why not choose a word that actually pierces through the conscious of people and makes them see the truth behind the labels that they use?” she questioned. The youth participants may initially see themselves as marginalized, she said, but they bring a new and different definition through their artistic creations. “Rather, it’s those people in society who are looking at these kids as worthless, as if they don’t stand a chance — it is they who are missing out — by not investing in the talents that these kids have at so many levels.”
The project’s formula is simple: a competitive public audition, through which just over a dozen youth are selected, then an intensive, five-day creativity training workshop, and then, finally, a public performance. Through the five-day youth arts training — focused on dance, drama, spoken word, and music — the project builds the talents, self-esteem, and consciousness of young people (from the ages of 15-22 years) who, as part of their training, create an original script and choreography for public performance.
The team includes Ilaria Chessa, a former development economist and film festival organizer, as producer and co-founder; Ade Bantu, an award-winning musical artist, as co-founder, music facilitator, and creative director; culture, art, and media consultant Ropo Ewenla and drama instructor Kayode Omolola, who serve as acting and theatre facilitators; spoken word poet, writer, and teacher AJ Dagga Tolar, who facilitates the spoken word and music; and Segun Adefila, a performance artist who facilitates the dance portion of the workshop.
From the margins to center stage
Working through these youth, the project also aims to promote peace and unity. The project helps these young people to come out of their shell, explore, and exhibit their creative talents. Through dance, poetry, theatre, and music, their public performances regularly feature calls for community action and improvement, from addressing waste and pollution to education, from child abuse and marginalization to collective responsibility.
It was in Ajegunle that BornTroWay was launched in May 2011. From there, the project took its initiative to Port Harcourt in October 2011 and Durban, South Africa in December 2011. While in Durban, the participants also took part in the World Climate Conference. For its fourth edition in August 2012, BornTroWay returned to Lagos in the Oshodi community. The Oshodi public performance took place in Cairo Market, where youth performed original music and theatre for a diverse audience. The lyrics for the original song the youth performed called for the residents to transform their community into a better place, free of violence, a place of peace and harmony.
For you and I to talk together
As a family, in peace and harmony
We can make Oshodi a better place
For you and you, for me and you
We can make Oshodi a better place
In Oshodi we don’t wan fight
the children sing in this video of their Cairo Market performance, captured by local news coverage of the creative arts project.
For its fifth edition, BornTroWay worked with youth in the Bariga community of Lagos. Altogether, Chessa estimates, BornTroWay has worked with nearly 200 youth in its work so far.
Planting the seeds for new opportunities
For the youth participants, BornTroWay is making a difference in their lives that goes far beyond teaching them to dance, to act, write a song or rap. Even in the first few days of each workshop, Chessa says, the difference she sees in many of the kids is amazing. At the beginning of the workshop, she sees kids who lack confidence, who don’t know how to present themselves. Yet from the second day, she and her team see a new set of people; even the light she sees in their eyes is amazing, she says.
“The transformation is a marvel to observe,” she says. “Because it’s only a five-day course … it’s just there to plant a seed of inspiration, and then that seed is watered by the kids themselves. It’s just basically a wake-up call to say, ‘Hey, you guys, have you seen what you’ve got?’”
Former participants can speak endlessly to the skills and insights they’ve gained from their experience. Some, like Godson, a 23-year old youth turned musical artist, are following a more predictable path: “As I’m talking to you now, I have a record deal, and just I launched my album last week,” he says. Godson participated in the BornTroWay Oshodi workshop in August 2012. His album, Sabulou (Hausa for “soap”) refers to his call for everyone to wash away bad problems and thoughts through dance.
“I learned a lot, I learned to believe in myself,” affirms Godson, who says one of the major talents he gained through the workshop was in dance, as well as support in his music from Bantu. “Whatever I am doing in my career, I’m always with BornTroWay,” he says. “We’re like family, we’re a family.”
18-year-old Franchesca from Ajegunle, who recently completed her secondary school study, says the most important lessons she gained from the workshop were on teamwork, humility, and love. “If you say you want to work on your own, you won’t achieve anything in life,” she said. “You have to carry people along, you have to work as a team.” She’s now part of a team working to organize a concert in February for BroTroWay Ajegunle, putting into practice the lessons she’s learned from her experience.
While some of the project’s participants may continue with careers in the arts, Chessa says that the important takeaway for these kids is the self-discovery of their talents and how to use them, in whatever facet of life. “We are using arts as a means to awaken kids self-confidence and appreciation for hard work, focus, and teamwork. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that we are hoping that everybody becomes an artist,” Chessa says. “With that self-confidence, they become a leader in any walk of life that they happen to be in … They may discover their talents in the arts, or they may become doctors or nurses; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the spirit with which they are doing these things is a leading spirit.”
“We want to reawaken the sense of self-worth in our youth, so that they can truly play their role in our society,” she adds.
Future opportunities
In a little over a year, BornTroWay has built a strong, successful history of performances in Nigeria and South Africa. In the future, BornTroWay and its leadership team look to partner with local organizations and other artists — and, eventually, to set up permanent, accessible community centers as spaces where youth can come, create, share, and network, making their ideas a reality. With all of the instructors based in Lagos, it also makes logistical sense to continue focusing on the city’s more accessible communities, and Chessa says that the team is looking to launch initiatives in Mushin, Obalende, and Makoko.
“It is about making an impact in an environment of young people who are living at different levels of neglect, either by the government or by the general society,” said Ropo Enwenla, facilitator for theatre arts with BornTroWay, during the Ajegunle workshop.
“If we didn’t for once think that it was going to make a difference, then we wouldn’t have come,” Ewenla has said. “We believe that we have a package, that can, in all situations, when applied correctly, bring about social change, transformation, and positive development.”
To see BornTroWay Creative Project’s work in action, see the video of their work in Ajegunle:
In Port Harcourt, Nigeria:
In Durban, South Africa: