Q & A With Nabila Alibhai: Color in Faith

1. How did this collaboration with Art @ The Bus come about? Deciding to paint the big red bus yellow? What’s the thinking behind it, as Colour in Faith focuses on places of worship?

Colour in Faith is about about creating a movement toward pluralism through art. Although Colour in Faith has focused primarily on houses of worship, doing something in the center of Nairobi’s creative hub with conveners of creativity makes total sense with our vision!  Art @ The Bus is becoming more central within Nairobi’s cultural scene as a place that brings together people of all races, incomes, religions etc.

 The bus itself is a fantastic metaphor for the mobility of culture and we were thrilled to be invited to paint the bus yellow! Over the next month we’ll be collaborating on a host of events that speak to art and change-making… panels, poetry jams, yellow interactions. 

2. How has your journey with Colour in Faith been like so far, especially in Africa?

It’s been equally inspiring and challenging. We were thrilled to find that the message of the project made sense to a lot of people. In the Kenyan context, where different religions have co-existed and enjoyed one another for decades, we’ve found that there is a lot of pain and paralysis from our experience of terrorism and the rising threat of fundamentalism.

With the elections coming up in 2017, people are also wary of religion being manipulated for political gains.  The idea of visually communicating love, faith in common humanity and unity, has had widespread appeal!  

3. How many places of worship are a part of the project so far? Tell us more about the Babadogo project. Is there an intentional effort to impact lower income areas first?

By September 2015, 14 houses of worship had expressed a desire to participate and by March 2016, we had more than 20! We only have the resources to paint six but the idea of having a constellation of yellow mosques, churches, temples and synagogues across the city sending a message of pluralism to the world through YELLOW is magnificent.   

We painted our first two houses of worship in Kibra last Saturday. We started there because Kibra is truly cosmopolitan with 42 tribes co-existing. I’ve heard it being said that ‘Kibra is Kenya.’  We found it very easy to work there with support from the local government, which has already identified pluralism and interfaith collaboration as a strong priority.  In Kibra, we are simply connecting with those who wish to communicate goodness and helping them send that message to the rest of the country and the world. 

4. The project promotes religious pluralism and emphasizes the underlying message of love. What has been your personal experience with religion and religious dialogue? Tell us about your journey in understanding what religion means to you.

I have had a really positive experience with religion. Although I grew up with one faith, that of my parents, I was exposed to many faiths growing up  – hinduism, christianity, buddhism, and Islam.  I didn’t realize how particular this experience is to Kenya until I travelled and found a few places that are as pluralistic. 

My experience of sacred spaces from a young age has allowed me to identify the sacred in all places – within and outside the walls of religion.  The sacred exists in faith but also in nature, in romantic love, in beauty, in every breath. Although I see it around me, my experience of religion has never placed boundaries around me. This is partially because I grew up with an attitude of intellectualism around it. I was always encouraged to ask questions, and to experience and redefine my faith on my own terms. 

Religion viewed outside of ‘the sacred’, that is, in cultural terms, is more complicated.  It raises questions of traditions and who creates them, of inclusion and exclusion, of authority, of definition and belonging.  These elements of religion have been as complicated for me as they are for most thinkers.  This is true for individuals in every place from Afghanistan to America. 

5. The Yard (the collective of The Bus, Alchemist and other residents of the space) have come under fire recently for discrimination (albeit unfairly). Do you think painting the Bus yellow is a bold statement for what the space stands for.

You should ask them! To me painting the bus YELLOW is whimsical, it’s fun, it’s social and it’s important. It makes total sense! 

6. Conscious thinking and religious dialogue in Africa – how do we merge the two? Is it possible? A part of your strategy is to collaborate with artists and the creative community (who are often known to be “godless”). How has this panned out for you?

I could write an essay on this! Being conscious starts with being present and aware.  Let’s start with having people ‘be present’ aka show up for the conversation! How do you do that? The average person has a limited appetite for long lectures and academic or political writing.  Interacting, engaging, conversing has to be pleasurable.  A mentor of mine, Doris Sommers from Harvard University, says ‘pleasure is derived from participation’,  and therefore art and civic engagement are totally connected.  It’s principles like these that we embrace in the manifestation of Colour in Faith. 

I’ve worked on participation, resilience and conflict transformation for almost 15 years and what I’ve found to be most powerful in changing perceptions is creativity and use of the imagination. This began with working with Search for Common Ground in their Middle East Media Working Group breaking down stereotypes through working with journalists, cartoonists, and theatre.  When I worked in Kakuma and Dadaab, we used photography and film to allow for catharsis through creative expression and communicating the reality of these troubled lives to the rest of the world. 

In recent years, I’ve been focusing on art practice and place – making as a means of engendering good leadership – empathetic leadership.  The first project I did that linked civic engagement and art was with Yazmany Arboleda, the Creative Director of Colour in Faith. We worked together to activate the creatives in Afghanistan in an installation called Monday Morning. One morning 130 youth artists and activists handed out 10,000 balloons to adults walking to work. The installation created unexpected joy and connection on the streets, created dialogue on the role of art in conflict and reframed the Kabul in the eyes of the international world. A city known for terror was now seen for its creative culture, its architecture, its street life and its warmth. 

The idea is that the imagination, and imagining with others, is really the necessary component of changing and innovating in any way. Artist Yazmany Arboleda refers to art not as a noun but as a verb. Being an artist is having the capacity to engage, process, reinvent and reframe.  In redefining art in this way, it makes it possible for everyone to be an artist. This capacity is relevant to every aspect of our lives. And the process of art making, that is to reconsider our place in the world, to improvise, to entice others into a creative experience of our own making – is to participate in the design of how we relate.   

Public installations like Colour in Faith are powerful because they activate the imagination of many and they call on us to collectively and deliberately create an expression of a world order that is better than the existing one. 

7. Future plans for the project?

In addition to collectively painting more houses of worship yellow we are hosting a series of additional art events and dialogues in partnership with Fatuma’s Voice and The East Africa Institute. Last weekend, we started a twitter conversation about the relationship between faith and patriotism in Kenya.  The conversation delved into the gap between what we believe and our actions. According to a survey by the EAI, 85% of youth value their faith but only 63% would stand up to the truth.  Why is that? Why is it so difficult to stand by one’s beliefs? 

We hope that this initiative will spread across the country and the world to express love of plurality and expression of faith in its best possible sense… a belief in LOVE as the most important element of all faiths. 

For more on inCOMMONS, the organization that is producing Colour in Faith, please go to www.in-COMMONS.com. inCOMMONS is an organization that focuses on civic engagement and place-making. 

Find original article here.