Jeleosimi founder encourages youths to explore creative industry
By Edith Igbokwe
The founder of Jelosimi Art Center, Arowojobe Oshodi, Sobayo Abolore, has encouraged the youths to explore opportunities in the creative industry, saying Fine Art is one aspect of the industry that can create more jobs for them if well harnessed.
He told ECHONEWS that he established the art centre to freely engage primary pupils and secondary school students in creative artwork as a strategy to get them off the streets and also revive indigenous languages which are fast going into extinction.
“Jeleosimi, literarily translated to ‘let the household rest’ which was popularly some years back was established to keep the kids busy away from home then so that the house could be at calm. I adopted the name and applied the practice in my art centre in a modern way because we need to make our homes, community, country to be at rest in terms of security and other social vices by keeping the young ones busy.
“For the fact that moral values have been lost from the home, youths take to violence on the streets. So, I created an avenue ‘Jelosimi visual Art Center’, where children and youths can use their energy positively to take them away from social vices such as stealing, smoking, fighting and to focus their energy on creativity.”
“The art centre is divided into two parts, the project works and the indigenous languages sections. Teaching has commenced with projects such as art classes, monthly book reading, tie and dye attire making and the exhibition of about 12 project works done on slate which are written in Yoruba language.
“My artwork is done on re-created slates to reflect the Jelosimi method of writing way back then and focus on my mother’s tongue (Yoruba language) to help people read, write and speak Yoruba fluently. And the essence of the exhibition we hold is to draw our consciousness not only to the aesthetics but to go beyond to connect with the deeper meaning of the artwork at the deeper level of the Yoruba language used as well as to generate discourse and document archives for our cultural heritage.”
According to him, about 1,000 youths have been trained at the centre at different levels of programmes either through regular students or the street boys.
He noted that the centre has trained more area boys who have been taken off the street.
He emphasised that the centre plays a significant role in teaching local languages (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa) to encourage more people to speak their languages.
He, therefore, sought support of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to fund the projects, adding that the centre is opened to volunteers who can teach the indigenous language courses.
