By: Bamijoko Favour

In July 2015, two students, Habeeb Kolade and Dolapo Amusat came together to start a collective, UITES WRITE, publishing electronic anthologies to their mention. The goal of UITES WRITE was to create a “platform to showcase literary work by University of Ibadan students and alumni” by creating a “community of past and present University of Ibadan students using art as a tool.”

By 2017, when members of the founding editorial team were about graduating from the school, UITES WRITE produced an offshoot — that has gone on “to create a common space for creative Africans” by “showcasing and celebrating African literary and visual art, and by that measure, engendering community.” This new organization is Agbowo Art. Nine years down the lane from the formation of UITES WRITE, no distinct organization for artists of any form, readers and writers exist on campus.

To be candid, contrary to the underlying lores that UITES only have their noses in their books, there is a host of genuine creatives amongst the daring number of students on campus. By “creatives”, people who engage with different forms of arts such as photography, drawing & painting, writing, theater, dancing, and even reading are involved. However, it appears on a broad surface that the creative talents of the University’s campus are under the cloak of invisibility. The seeming anonymity of the UI-centric creative talents (excluding those in the theatre space) is simply due to the lack of a cohesive group.

The need to have a cohesive group, or organization of people with similar interests is undeniably significant. To begin with, social interaction enhances creativity. With social interactions, new viewpoints or perspectives about opinions, or even more thoughts are hatched and nurtured. Claude Monet, the founder of impressionism painting, noted that during the invasion of Paris in the 19th century by artists, “Café culture was the spark of conversation; and conversations were the fuel of art.”

Having interpersonal organizations and cohesive communities for creatives will bring about cross-pollination of ideas as well as heterogeneous innovative solutions derived from the crossbreeding of different ideas. By engaging in profound discussions on salient subject matters there is bound to be better dynamism for the creatives who belong to such society.

Few things did more for the black or civil rights struggle of Afro-Americans than the Harlem Renaissance. In the early 20th century, constricted by the segregative policies of the Jim Crow South, many Afro-Americans fled North. Berthing up North, around Harlem and its surrounding areas, Afro-American artists, writers and literati utilized the transformative power of cohesive groups by forming themselves into (a) strong socio-cultural hub(s). In no time, the oeuvre of the new negro movement, impelled by the cross-pollination of ideas and talents, witnessed remarkable development.

From that period or movement emerged groundbreaking artists, writers, feats and works that have continued to impact literature, arts, music, pop culture, on a global pedestal. For example, writers like Laughton Hughes, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, and Richard Wright, amongst others, wrote the collective experience of negroes into the popular consciousness of the whites. Also, there was the crew of photographers who documented vivid experiences of the negroes into form, and subsequently authoritatively impacted the global body of photography; photographers like James Van Der Zee, James Latimer Allen, Henri Cartier-Bresson are worthy of note. In other forms, the impact of the works of the black creatives were of no less impact.

Music genres like Blues, Spirituals, Jazz, were prominently developed from within the Harlem Renaissance by people like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Florence Mills, before they courted the attention of even the pop culture of the whites. The point is simple: by pooling a posse of talented individuals into a group, the creatives of a particular society were able to first, consolidate their talent, and subsequently create compelling narratives that redounded to the image of blacks and the black struggle even amongst the white.

Several other art movements progressed on the horseback of the cross-pollination and interpersonal development that comes with group cohesion. It is this same approach that must be adopted by creatives we have in UI — photographers, writers, artistes, alike. At some point in the past, there were creative groups from UI. There was the Mbari House, Unibadan Mask, the Black Orpheus publishing group, amongst others. However, these have thinned out into a wormhole of memory.

The jejune state and slow-paced progress of the social, and entertainment life of UI has been lamented about once too many times. Several press organizations have at some points published articles about it; other times, UITES themselves have taken to social media to decry the monotonicity of campus life. When placed side by side with other Federal Schools of similar repute (OAU, Unilag, even UNN), UI only totters behind the lot. The first step to remedying this dispiriting branding is coming together, creating a collective identity and from there on, engaging in fertile cross-development of ideas. By doing so, the creatives from UI will be restored to the fore as a force to reckon with.