Reengineering the mindset of the next generation through art spaces in Tamale | The Ibrahim Mahama Fashion

Story: Rahamatu-Lahi Zakaria 

In every generation, we have people who come to offer their selfless service to the community without asking anything in return. Northern region especially Tamale is lucky to have those people live with us and our generation is even more fortunate to have lived in that period and learned from them.

Ibrahim Mahama is one of those people who is impacting lives and changing the narrative of the region using art as a means of communication. In this short span that he has come to establish art spaces in Tamale, the city is now among the top art cities to visit in the world and that is a remarkable feat to achieve by an individual. In an interview with Sanatau Zambang, he mentions his philosophy of wanting to live something behind. It is not just to live in the moment but to live beyond the moment

 ‘’As I said before it reinforces the idea of community building. Even now more than ever, we need to learn how to invest in our communities that somehow would outlive ourselves. The problem is that we always think in a moment but we have to learn to think beyond the moment. Though people always said the moment is what matters, for me, the moment is not as important as the beyond’’.

Ibrahim Mahama

Ibrahim Mahama has three art institutions in the Northern region thus, the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art behind the Northern Regional Coordinating Council, Redclay Studios at Jeina and Nkrumah Voli Ni at Nyohani. These spaces can be accessed for free. A lot of people have asked how he is going to recoup the money used in establishing these spaces and also make a profit. But the artist has always said that the spaces are for the community benefit and not for profit. Yet, people still do not get the logic why someone will invest such an amount into something that will not fetch him money.

One of the fascinating things about his establishments so far has to do with the moving of old planes from Accra to Tamale. It was the first time something of that sort happened and for the first time, that children in that community came face to face with a plane and had the opportunity to learn inside as well. While others are thinking about how he can turn it into a restaurant for the privileged in the society to use, he is thinking about how he can make it accessible for all in the community to use and change the way they are thinking and imagine a world where everything is possible if only you stop to think about it.

‘’We are building something that somehow changes the perception of an entire generation.  For me, that is the most important thing. I want the work to connect to younger people. I don’t want them to grow up and ask the same questions I did when I was growing. At that point, we would have failed.’’

Ibrahim Mahama

For the artist, it is all about creating an equal society where anything is possible if only you dream it. And so, these spaces are meant to somehow re-engineer the way the next generation in the region will think and build a sustainable and equal community. He acknowledges the privileges he enjoys and the unjust nature of the world that exist. This unequal world he says can end if we all make conscious efforts to invest in infrastructure and ideas.  

‘’ the world is just unequal and we can change that and make sure that the world is equal, to begin with, so that everyone has equal opportunities and things like that. But in other for that to happen we have to acknowledge that, and use equality as the starting point by that, it means we have to invest into infrastructure, invest into ideas that can somehow re-change the way in which humanity in itself operate.’’

Ibrahim Mahama

‘’By going to take this Pino Pascali, the Prince Clause and all those, it is emitting all those museums in the world because recently I was named one of the 100 most influential art players in the world. And who would have ever thought that Tamale would be on the world map in terms of thinking artistic ideas or revolutionary ideas, things like that? It means that, now, it has set a new precedence in an entire generation in terms of how they think and their being. And for us, that is what it means. The more we have, the more we have to distribute.’’  He added

For me as a person, the moment I realised what these spaces and institutions mean and what is represent was at the opening of Nkrumah Voli Ni. A picture of a boy holding a drone and teaching his colleagues how to use it was shone on a screen. First, I just saw it as a normal picture until the father of the boy who was present got up to introduce himself as the Assemblyman of Jenna and identify the boy as his son who was among the first people to learn how to use the drone.

Now, he is helping the institution to teach other kids. This was something that was unimaginable, but now it is possible since the arrival of Ibrahim Mahama and the legacy that he is building through the spaces and institutions.

And so reengineering the mindset of the next generation through art spaces in Tamale will start from kids in Jenna, like the Assemblyman’s son who is now a pro in operating a drone and actually for the first time, has access to sit inside a plane and learn new technology and art.

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