INTRODUCTION

Mayo is a locality in southern Khartoum heavily influenced internally by the underdeveloped infrastructure and the scarcity of education, health systems, and public support. It is also influenced externally through the various prejudices and assumptions that surrounding counties have associated with the space and its inhabitants.

The locality of Mayo consist of a very culturally and ethnically diverse communities of IDPs, with their own definitions of identity yet the community is sustaining resilience in a harmonic manner. 

The various development initiatives of building schools and health centers through an inclusive approach to all groups, genders, and sub-districts have shown their value and impact on the community yet much can be done. 

The approach of the project is to use the value of expression and a set of easily learned skills to reproduce a new community outlook to how the neighborhoods and spaces can speak in color and reflect the aspirations of individuals. The project will educate a group of individuals on the various methods of aesthetical recycling and how to share this knowledge then will carry them alongside professional artists in the rebranding of 5 various public spaces in Mayo.

Project Implementation & Strategy:

1. Project Team:

1.1.       Project Manager: Rahiem Shadad:

Abdelrahiem Faisal (AKA Rahiem Shadad) is a 27 years old curator and gallerist. He is the director for Downtown Gallery and the assistant curator for the Regional French Institute in Sudan. Rahiem has a great experience in project management and has worked on numerous creative projects. His work as a curator has gotten him to be largely familiar with Sudanese artists and he has formed a strong relationship with them. Rahiem is the project manager for the “Street Art In Mayo” Project.

1.2.       Coordinating Team

The team which has worked on the above mentioned project Includes, Mohammed Ali Saeed who worked as an assistant project manager and monitored the smooth flow of logistics, records for collected data, and coordination with artists on their arrival daily. The other person is Mohammed Issam who was focused on running logistical needs requested day-to-day by the artists or anyone else from the community.

1.3.       Artists:

1.3.1.  Amani Azhari

Amani Azhari Babiker, 23, studied at the Sudan University of Science and Technology in the Department of Painting and Coloring. She has participated in various workshops that use the arts as a tool for raising awareness and promoting social development. These include a workshop with the UNDP, an awareness initiative on the harmful effects of FGM, and a workshop on the use of medicines with the World Health Organization.

Amani has also participated in several group exhibitions, including Their Coffee is Art (Heritage House), the Khalid Dawa Exhibition (Downtown Gallery, 2021), and the Bait El Nisa exhibition (Savannah Gallery, 2020).

1.3.2.  Tawadud Zakaria

Born in 1998, Tawadud is an architect and a self taught artist. She graduated from Bahri University. Tawadud has done a lot of workshop and works related to social programing using arts. She’s also been part of many murals around the city of khartoum. Tawadud’s social message using arts has reached areas outside Khartoum, in fact she was part of the “Nartatiti peace convoy” in 2020 as an artist advocating peaceful coexistence.

1.3.3.  Najlaa Nooraldeen

Born in 1998, Najlaa Nooraldeen Ahmed Abdelrahman is a civil engineering graduate from Omdurman Islamic University. Najlaa is the co-founder of The Salvation in Art Organization which has been painting murals around Sudan and using arts for social healing. Najlaa has great experience in project management and volunteerism and has been to many intensive workshops and training courses on these topics.

1.3.4.  Abdelmagid Afifi

Born 5 February 1966 in Khartoum, Sudan. He gained a Further Education Certificate for Painting Sec. (U.S.T.S.) Afifi has held numerous solo exhibitions and group exhibitions both in Sudan and France, where he lived for a short time before returning to his homeland of Sudan. He has also completed many workshops in his native Khartoum.

Afifi is a proud Sudanese and contributes much of his time and energy and a percentage of his personal sales for the benefit of local charities particularly for needy local children. He is very community minded and family orientated and aware of the struggles that faces Sudan at this present time and therefore always ready and wanting to help.

1.3.5.  Waleed Mohammed

Due to his excellence and commitment, he was able to exhibit his work for his first time in “Across Generations'' collective exhibition next to works by the renowned artists Mohammed Abdullah Otaybi, Salah Abdelhai, Khalid Abdelrahman and Abir Fahd, in 20th Oct, 2021. This wonderful opportunity was his turning point and attracted a great deal of admirers and numerous collectors. Five months later he succeeded in hosting his first solo exhibition “Reverse” in “Downtown Gallery”, in Khartoum, 21st 2022 Jan. Though he’s only 21. His passion for art bounded him to pursue painting as a major, he opened his own studio in Khartoum after his first solo exhibition. Waleed Mohammed a Sudanese contemporary artist, Born in 2000, and raised in Khartoum city, Sudan. he is a final year student at “Painting” department, “College of Fine and Applied Arts”. He is influenced by Nostalgia in his artworks and he is trying to showcase the origin of his style stems through old photographs, he thinks his style adopted to communicate the great influence from the pictures that he worked on for forming his identity.

1.3.6.  Mojahid Alhady

Mojahid Alhady (1997), born in khartoum, is a graduate artist of the department of Graphic Design of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Sudan University of Science and Technology. Mojahid contributed to the painting of many murals around Khartoum. In 2020, he joined the team of Downtown Gallery and became the framer of the gallery. Today, Mojahid has great involvement and interaction with many of the active artists of the scene today.  

1.3.7.  "Hajjeytak" Book Ambassadors

A collection of stories from the EUNIC project Hajjeytak; Literature Connects. They include folk tales and also wonderful original illustrations of these stories.

The values ​​promoted by these stories vary between honesty, insight and quick wit, justice, interdependence, environmental cleanliness and benevolence, acceptance of the other and rejection of bullying, and animal welfare.

Book Ambassadors are trained individuals on how to use Kamishibis to tell these specific stories. Walid and Taj are the two Book Ambassadors who joined us in Mayo.