By Japhet Davidson

In the time past, it was like ataboo for a child to venture into arts as the parents will see him/her as a failure and will not give him/her the needed support. But today, the story is different as parents now take their children to arts training and workshop.

This was case last week during the closing of children art summer class tagged Thinking Environment and nurturing children organised by Godwin Archie-Abia, the CEO of Win Arc gallery at his studio in Baruwa, Ipaja Lagos. Some of the parents brought their children to the venue and even stayed with them till the end of the programme.

After one month of training, the children were given the opportunity to showcase what they have learnt within the period, and as it turned out to be, the children did not disappoint their art teacher and their parents as they exhibited their creative skills as seen in the way they handled the materials and mixed colours to produce stunning works.

Speaking about the project, the CEO of Win Arc gallery Archie-Abia said, “One of the things I had in mind while coming to Ipaja was to create an environment for children to be creative and display it. I realised that our children are not creative, and we need children that are creative, so what we lack, we need to inculcate it to our children and that is to activate that thinking spirit in them. What we are doing here is to activate their creative skills, they may not necessarily end up as artist but to have a creative mind to solve problems.

“If you do not have the creative mind, you cannot think and that is the problem in Africa, our leaders are not creative. When you are creative, you can be able to create wealth, so we need a creative society that can solve problems.”

He however, promised to organise a group exhibition for the children where they will exhibit their works next year.

On his part, Harry Ogada Nwaosu, the art instructor said, “It has been an interesting programme, we started in August and the enthusiasm of the children were high. We have seen a lot of improvement in them, they started with simple foundation of using papers and now they have graduated to using oil on canvass. We’ve been able to explore the creative talents in them, some of them have started painting works and are selling. That is what we are doing here, catching them young. Some of us did not have this type of opportunity during our time, but we thank God for providing such for our children.”

For Wasiu Olayiwola, chairman, Peace Estate zone 4. “We commend Mr Abia for what he is doing for the children in this community, the project is good and we want it to be more elaborate than this next time. I appeal to parents to bring their children to such programme and also appeal to the government to fix the roads to the Estate so that children outside the community can be part of it.”

Elated Secretary of the Zone, Emma Ogunremi, “We are happy to have him here teaching our children how to be creative. I urge the children to pay attention to him because creativity is the order of the day. If you are not creative you will not succeed.”

For Taju Gbadamosi, “Abia is like our father, he is teaching the children how to be creative, if our leaders were taught how to be creative like these children, we will not be in this mess in Africa.”

Also speaking, Oluwatemige Isaiah, a parent said, “I love what they are doing because it makes the children to be versatile. It will help them to bring out their real nature. It is something I lack, but I am happy that my children are bringing it to my house. I support and encourage them.”