7 days of Street Democracy: The Korogocho Festival
Every year, the youths from Korogocho come together to celebrate their neighbourhood and express their thoughts through art. This week is that time of the year and we made the trip to see what they would be working on.
It’s Monday and officially the first day of the week, but these guys weren’t going to let their pride for their town be limited to just one week. No, they have been at at it for a while now, in fact, last week they had a few sessions leading up to the festival . The sessions included a Creative Lab Workshop: a crash course on making a living from the arts with special emphasis on copyrights, Write Flow was a hip hop session that saw the guys from Koch (Short for Korogocho) join up with hip hop artists from the neighbouring Kariobangi estates and share their love for the genre. On the 9th of August, they had a walk dubbed ‘Different Communities, One People’ that saw them collaborate with Kilimani residents and walk from Kilimani to Korogocho.
And today, they woke up in this same proactive spirit and started work on a Talking Wall Mural. The Talking Wall Mural has seen graffiti artists from across the city gather in Korocho, painting the streets of korogocho. The artists are using house walls as backdrops and thus the organizers of the festival organizers had to go round in advance and ask for permission from the owners of the buildings. Skaters from Korogocho, under the banner name ‘Hope Risers’ are the guys in charge, under the leadership of one Daniel Onyango. Consequently, the Talking Mural painting started on their base, a street called ‘Kwa Chief’.
The Korogocho Festival is a celebration of Korogocho, but mostly it is the use of art to express opinion: street democracy.
Other events that will take place during Koch Festival include: presentation of classic music by Ghetto Classics, street cafes and percussion forums. The festival runs till Sunday with an open air Community Cultural Concert Our Lady of Fatima Secondary School.
Follow the Festival on the Facebook page.
