Overlooking the lagoon sits a cottage theatre, which houses the Footprints of David Art Academy. It is almost masked by grasses along flood-prone Community Road, in Bariga, Lagos. For Seun Awobajo, the founder of the academy, Bariga community had been portrayed negatively for too long in the media. And to change the narrative, a massive photography exhibition by youths of Bariga is set to show the diverse talents behind the cameras.
The exhibition with the theme, ‘Bariga Photo Festival 2019’, is the climax of an eight-month long photography workshop. Awobajo, who was born and raised in Bariga, is one of the few socially committed artists from Bariga community that boasts of music icons such as King Sunny Ade, Queen Salawa, 9ice, Olamide, Cabasa, Ajasa, Tony Tertuilla and actor-director, Segun Adefila amongst others.
According to Awobajo, the festival is a maiden edition organized in partnership with Canon. “Since February, we started the Bariga Photo School where we train youths on the art and act of photography. And we train 20 adults and 20 children every month on the art of photography for free. We are going to continue this training till October when we will hold an exhibition in celebration of Bariga Photo Festival’’.
He also said that Canon, one of the leading camera brands in the world, sent in a team of six experts to train the young ones on different genres of photography.
The three-day exhibition will hold from 24 to 26 October in Bariga, a community that boasts a very high concentration of theatre art practitioners in Africa.
“Three out of five streets in Bariga have a cultural troupe,” Awobajo claimed.
Since 2005, Awobajo has been picking children off the streets of Bariga to enrol for free art classes and take part in creative development programmes.
Many of the children go fishing for a living. The people in the community are unable to access good roads and when it rains, they sit at home to avoid the floods.
“Today, we now have this space which serves multiple functions. It is a free school for over 207 children with 16 staff teachers. In the evening, we use the building for theatre performances and we also train children,” he said.
The photo festival targets 600 youths and the best of which will showcase their works at the exhibition. These works will be installed in major spots in Bariga and other parts of Lagos.
“We also extend adult edition classes to parents. We have a compulsory monthly PTA meeting which sometimes features seminar or training. We partner some lecturers at University of Lagos to hold some of these classes. It is a big movement and we try to solve problems. Every Saturday, there is a mandatory session for mothers and we call it The Gbe bodi e team” where we do aerobics for a minimum of 30 mins.
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