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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: E32-10. To panel E32.

Title of paper:

Author:

Oluwatoyin Olokodana-James (University of Lagos).

Short abstract paper:
Makoko is a major slum in Lagos where residents live in shanties relying on polluted water for their livelihoods. This intervention prepares the children within Makoko for mental reformation towards physical and social change through identifying methods within the conscious creative spaces.

Long abstract paper:
One of the reasons Makoko community has become popular with influx of national and international visitors is not a condition of it's state of art technology or it's tourist attractions. This area is regarded as one of the major slums in Lagos with well over 300, 000 occupants living in shanties constructed on stilts, and surviving round the year on proceeds from the polluted water upon which this community occupy. This though may be a resultant of an uncontrolled urban migration, the inhabitants of this community are bona fide citizens of the country, yet, they constantly face threats of eviction, water pollution and diseases, insecurity, and marginalization by the Lagos state government who has withdrawn all infrastructural support for this community because the area is supposedly believed to constitute a nightmare for the Lagos envisaged mega city. It is in view of this that this study observes that the Lagos state government has failed in her responsibility to the people, hence the need to employ a qualitative ethnographic research as a catalyst for social change. Studying about these people, there cultural belief, practices and identities and than creating theatrical structures with children between ages 5 and 15 to act as the mouth pieces and catalysts for change and reformation within the Makoko slum constitutes the feat of the research. The study pivoted on social activism and artivism as it's theoretical points of reference employs the performance interventional method in quarrying the socio-cultural evidential abnormalities and evaluating children's participatory activism. The study observes as findings that the Makoko children in spite of there vastness in cultural histories are beginning to divert there energies towards negativity, laziness and violence ridden culture. The study also shows that the artistic ingenuity of the children living within this region remains untapped particularly with level of artistic skills and inventiveness exhibited during rehearsal for performance. Hence, there is need to redirect there energies artistically through the employment of an art intervention towards psycho-Artistic reformation. This intervention therefore becomes expedient in preparing the children for mental reformation towards physical and social change through identifying methods and the unconscious creative spaces they negotiate daily in there bid for sustainability in the face of scarcity and deficient infrastructure.

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