Kuona Trust

Kuona Trust’s activities include the following artists development strategies:

• Exhibitions: Kuona Trust’s second artist-led exhibition opened on July 10, 2009 at the Trust's centre for visual arts. It featured artwork by artists such as Sam Hopkins, John Kamicha, Peterson Kamwathi, Anthony Okello, Michael Soi, and Ogonga Thom.
• Workshops: Through the technical workshops programme Kuona Trust works to assist upcoming artists to develop their skills. Artists exchange ideas, learn from each other, and learn first hand from a master artist. According to the organisers, the participating artists are then able to put into practice what they learn over the workshop period. The technical workshop experience is taken into provinces through provincial workshops. The workshops usually involve 20 to 25 artists from the region and ends in an open day for the community with the objective of involving the community and raising awareness about art and artists.
• Artist Residencies: The international artist’s residency programme was founded in 1998. It allows artists from different cultures to spend a period of 10 weeks working at the Kuona studios. The programme offers international artists the opportunity to interact with local artists, to expand their network internationally, and to experience a climate of cultural diversity. Kuona Trust has held 13 residency programmes, where twenty-six artists from the developing world have participated. The artists in the residencies were recruited based on the outstanding quality of their artwork, the personal qualities which would make them suitable for the closeness of the residence experience, and their track-record of public art making projects. Over the years Kuona has had artists from Brazil, Thailand, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uganda, Egypt, Nigeria, Japan, Jamaica, South Africa, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and the Netherlands.
• International Workshops: Kuona Trust organises different workshops in an effort to help artists share ideas and learn from each other and also to allow cultural exchange among artists.

Kuona outreach programmes are designed to use art as a tool for communication, change, and social commentary on current social and political issues. The outreach programmes seek to make art an integral part of every day life by giving opportunities to various groups and communities to interact with art. The organisation has different outreach programmes including the following:

• Watoto wa Kwetu: is a Kuona Trust weekend art project for children, 4 to 12 years, in Mathare slum that is designed to be fun-filled and artistically inspired. Kuona Trust supports this project, which involves hosting art workshops for children every Saturday where they make art using various media. The project was started as an opportunity to offer children the alternative of being creative and responsible in the face of some of the "antisocial activities" available in their day to day life.
• Prison Art Project: Lang’ata Women’s prison is the largest of its kind in Kenya. Kuona Trust was allowed by the Ministry of Home Affairs to carry out a visual arts programme within the Kenyan prisons system. This involved a series of sessions with established artists where the inmates learned various art making techniques.
• Rhino Care Youth Programme: This programme ran from June to December 2005. Apart from artistic skills, the workshops were desigend to foster mentoring relationships between the artists and students. At the end of the workshops, Kuona trust invited the youth to make Christmas cards which were sent to local partners, collaborators, and friends. In conjunction with a senior artist, the youth also created a mural at a community hall in their home area.
• Street Children’s fun day programme: The programme invites 60 children once a month to spend a fun day at the National Museum in Nairobi. The programme activities include a visit to the museum galleries, art activities, drama, and an educational movie. As a result of the programme, a construction of an environmentally orientated work of art created by street children using discarded wire was coordinated. The Baobab tree was constructed in November and December 1999 by more than 80 children from a number of homes associated with the Kuona Trust street children’s projects. The children were guided and assisted by artist Omega Ludenyi and a number of other volunteers.
• Billboard Project: Kuona Trust worked with the Dutch artist Rene Klarenbeek to realise the Daily Billboard Project in central Nairobi. Every day during the project, Rene and the Kenyan artists working with him would present a new painting on a 9 square metre billboard erected on Aga Khan Walk, Nairobi. Passers-by were invited to write comments on what they saw on papers. These were later attached to the billboard each evening for public perusal before yet a new painting was installed. Each new painting was inspired by a comment or comments made during the day and in this way the billboard became a diary of public opinion on events of popular concern ranging from the August 1998 bomb blast to the rights of children and tribal clashes.

Children