Westbury receives a colourful visit from Nigerian artist Kunle Adewale

Paint and peace at the Westbury Youth Centre.

Kunle Adewale assisting one of the youth participants with some paint work.

Westbury Youth Centre experienced the visual expressions workshop with Kunle Adewale on May, 24.

The art workshop was a collaboration between Mandela Washington Fellowship Kunle Adewale and Sade Savings who is the Chairperson of MashUp Westbury Youth Centre.

The theme for the workshop was ‘countering violence creating peace through creativity’.

The workshop went from conversation to visual expressions where Adewale told the class how he grew up in an environment of violence and crime. “My father married two wives, we fourteen children, we live in one room.

So, tell me what excuse you have if I grew up in such an environment where they shoot and do drugs, but today I’m an inspiration, the kind of environment that I grew up in does not determine who I am today,” said Adewale.

Topics such as gun violence, crime, drug addiction, abortion, teenage pregnancy, absent fathers, discrimination and segregation, poverty that affects the community of Westbury were all discussed.

**The colourful combination of peace and paint at the Westbury Youth Centre**.

According to Adewale, the sad reality is if the youth does not have quality education and employment they will embrace violence and engage in crime as a means of survival.

Interestingly enough art provides a safe space for social development, creates self-awareness, empowers youth to discover their strength to be the best at their gifts and talents.

This type of psychosocial creative support helps to rehabilitate victims of violence and reintegrate them back into their normal lives.

“The representation of peace to me is like a bird, so I drew a bird in the middle and there’s a cartoon character that I drew in the middle, and then from that bird, all the other birds fly out from there they fly out and they represent peace, hope, love and all those things, they spread the message in all the different types of direction so it’s basically one idea that goes all over the world,” said Solomon White, a participant of the workshop.

**Dick Solomons displaying his artwork with Kunle Adewale**.

The disconnect between the community’s ills and the creativity is all that the youth of the community needs.

“To paint a colourful world and beautiful world, not the world full of bloodshed, crime, and bloodshed, so with that paintbrush, they can create a beautiful world,” explained Adewale

In the words of Adewale, “Where and how you were born is not as important as ‘why’ you were born, the ‘why’ is a purpose, its reason for existence. So, when you discover the ’why’ you change everything.”