Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Richmore Tera
10 July 2009
Harare — ARTISTES have been urged to join in the campaign to conserve the environment through the use of environment-friendly material and shun from tendencies that have harmful effects.
Trust Marangwanda, the director of Eco-Africa an art organisation that goes under the name "Friends of the Environment," which uses waste gathered from the environment to make artifacts made the call during a tour of one of their centres in Chitungwiza by The Herald recently.
Other centres run by Eco-Africa, that are located in Epworth, Hatcliffe and Masvingo, also use the "Friends of the Environment" tag in their creativity to conserve nature.
They gather material like pod-seeds, dry grass, maize peels, weeds, cattle and elephant dung and offcuts from clothing workshops which they recycle to produce hand-made artifacts like bookmarks, picture frames, paper, postcards, notebooks, pens and fridge-magnet decorations, among others. "The idea was how best we could make a living from the environment around us without harming it. We realised that we had 'wonderful waste materials' around us that we could use to eke out a living since we don't believe in destroying the environment or killing animals in order to achieve our ends.
"That is when we decided to use waste from factories and nature to make our own art products," he said. Since its inception seven years ago, the organisation has nurtured over 400 artists who have passed through their centres and the majority of them have since ventured into their own solo projects.
When the Herald Entertainment visited their Chitungwiza centre situated in Manyame Park, scores of artists the majority of them women were busy making their artifacts.
One of the supervisors, Memory Ngovera, who has been with Eco-Africa for three years, commended the initiative, describing it as a source of sustenance and empowerment not only for women, but even youths in the community. "Some people might take paper and wire to be useless and throw it away, but we are using the materials to come up with something.
"It is from this that were are eking a living. It is an easy job because the material we use is readily available, and most of the time we don't have to pump out money from our pockets since we can just go out there and pick the material from around," she said. Another artist, Tight Marondera, who started her art career in 2003, said the art didn't require machinery since almost everything was hand-made.
"Through our own hands and the resources that we get from the environment without harming it, we are now managing to make an income for self-sustenance and that for the upkeep of our families. "We are now able to uplift ourselves as women and youth through this art venture," she said.
Eco-Africa has created a market for their wares in the United States, Europe and South Africa, where they sell the artifacts through an international organisation, Helping Hands for Africa, which also conducts exhibitions on their behalf, among other activities.
While there are other visual art forms that Eco-Africa specialises in such as wire art and stone sculpture, Marangwanda, however, revealed that plans to construct a big arts centre in Chitungwiza that would encompass all art genres, were at an advanced stage.
"The idea is to come up with a home for all artists not only from Chitungwiza but from all walks of life where they can come together. "The idea of the centre is also to try and revitalise the craft community of Chitungwiza because of late most of these artistes had shunned their trade opting for others like building and vending.
"With the centre we want them to come back to the trade they love and do better under one community that is attractive to tourists, buyers and art lovers," he said. He explained that they would engage foreign artists who would come to the centre on cultural exchange programmes. "We also want to involve artists from other countries to come and conduct seminars and workshops with their local counterparts.
"We are going to start with fundraising concerts and galas and by year end the centre would be complete," he said.
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