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MASK is a visionary organisation that aims to contribute to socio-economic development in East Africa by providing young people with practical opportunities to learn and develop skills of creativity and innovation.
MASK’s vision is young people engaged in creative education that contributes to individual, social and economic development, to human rights, to democracy, and to the eradication of poverty on the African continent.
We define development according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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ACTIVITIES and AIMS
 MASK activities: We support a range of programs and events that provide access to creative education, and promote peace-building:
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MASK runs workshops in schools and helps schools to set up weekly clubs
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MASK puts on regular local, national and international exhibitions and competitions
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MASK runs teacher-training programmes
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MASK runs Art for Peace-Building workshops in schools.
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In partnership with Article 25, the leading international architectural charity, MASK buildings a permanent ‘creative education’ school
MASK aims to contribute to:
Employability of young people
Eradication of poverty
Economic development
Peace building
Promotion of culture
WHY WE SET UP MASK?
In East African schools creative education is almost non-existent.
Young people constitute 75% of the population of East Africa, i.e. a 100 million. The current waste of creative capacities and resource is tragic!
The photograph: MASK's children with The Kenya's Minister for National Heritage and Culture, The Hon. William Ole Ntimama, the Ministry's Director of Culture, Gladys Gatheru, and MASK's Founding Director, Alla Tkachuk, April 2011, Nairobi.
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JOBS
The business world is changing from mass production to innovation and the pursuit of creativity on a global scale. Academic qualifications alone will no longer guarantee work. Employers now want people who can contribute to the organisation in terms of novel ideas and problem solutions that will improve services and products and add to profit.
Research shows that if creative ability is not developed, it will diminish from 98% when a child is 5 to 32% by age of 10, to 10% by age of 15, and to 2% by age of 25.
PEACE-BUILDING
 Creative education develops a sense of community and social coherence.
Most East African countries have experienced conflict in the last decade. Most of the conflicts in the region have come as a result of tribal or ethnic antagonisms. The cultures of East Africa are diverse. There is a need to focus on teaching multiculturalism.
MASK’s Art for Peace-Building workshops help to reap the benefits of this diversity and to mitigate the difficulties of intercultural understanding. .
 ECOMOMY
In the US, the ‘intellectual property’ sectors, those whose value depends on their ability to generate new ideas rather than to manufacture commodities, are now the most powerful element in the economy. Creative industries in the US employ 6 million people generating $160 billion every year. In the UK, the creative industry is the second largest industry after the financial sector, generating $90 billion and employing 1.7 million people. Employment in the UK creative industries has grown by 34% in the last decade against a background of almost no growth in employment in the economy as a whole.
In East Africa, the creative industries can have a strong economic impact. Some East African governments, such as Uganda, recognise the importance of developing creative industries, but they have not yet identified creative education as a key means of achieving this.
ERADICATING POVERTY
‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’ is Goal 1 in the United Nations Millennium Declarationof 2000. ”Entrepreneurship is the most powerful force the world has ever known for eradicating poverty and creating opportunity” (US Global Development Policy of 2010). Creative education is a key to entrepreneurship. There is no entrepreneurship without creativity and innovation.
CULTURE
 Creative education is intimately related to culture; it promotes culture. The new Kenyan Constitution of 2010 recognises ‘creativity and culture as the foundation of the nation’, yet it does not include education for creativity and culture as a ‘form of promoting’ it.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Creativity and innovation skills promote, among others:
highest level of thinking
resourcefulness
initiative
self-creation
ability to cope with change and communicate successfully
ability to understand and express ideas, values and feelings
extended imaginative capacities
raise self-esteem and motivation
help the young to define who they are
ability to generate new ideas and opportunities
ability to look at the world in alternative ways
MASK’s MODEL
MASK, is essential to the development, not additional luxury.
Working side by side with schools, MASK provides an alternative ways to enrich the provision of creative education in schools in East Africa.
MASK has developed an effective model for non-formal creative education in schools. [Non-formal means outside of the formal education system, outside the school curriculum and school hours.]
Our model couldbe be effectively replicated across Africa.
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THE ARTS AND CREATIVE EDUCATION
Creative education is learning for creativity, innovation, improvement, and change.
Creative education is more than the arts. It is not the study of the arts and producing works of art. The arts, though, play an important role in enabling creative skills in young people. Being creative doesn’t mean at all that you can draw or play an instrument. Being creative it is a way of thinking,
MASK provides creative education both - through the arts and through teachingcreative thinking directly.
The artsteach the ability to understand and express ideas, values and feelings. They extend imaginative capacities, and raise self-esteem and motivation. The arts help young people to communicate and define who they are. The innovation begins with an eye. The visual arts make creative abilities possible. They develop capacities to form and operate mental images, to represent thinking visually, and to observe. Creative thinking is the ability to generate ideas and opportunities, invent new products and processes. It is the ability to look at the world in alternative ways and solve problems creatively.
MASK carefully designs exercises and learning situations for all ages and levels of children that enable their:
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abilities to generate practical ideas, opportunities and alternatives, including those that can apply in daily life;
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abilities to make novel connections and combinations;
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visual and spatial skills;
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confidence and competence for being creative and thus more productive;
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a better balance between logic and imagination.
Read what our children say
click here
"Hi Alla, I want to tell you that your efforts are not in vain. These children will live to tell how their works ‘spoke’ to other children in the world", Jennifer Wambugu, Head of Creative Arts at the Kenya Institute of Education.
Leading development agencies on creative education:
Learning of arts and creativity is indispensable for the growth and sustainable development of societies and of individuals. (UNESCO, read more on the UNESCO's website)
Creative education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be leaders for tomorrow. (Barack Obama)
Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life, to enjoy the arts and to share its advancement and benefits. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27)
No nation can achieve a high quality of growth if elements of its human potential remain untapped or under-used. (European Commission on making creative education compulsory)
A sustainable, balanced model of growth can only be ensured by integrating culture with economic and social development. (The Commonwealth, read more on Commonwealth Statement on Culture and Development.)
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MASK'S PRINCIPLES & VALUES
MASK is committed to the following fundamental principles:
Democracy, accountability, responsibility and transparency;
Collaboration and partnership with existing organisations and institutions;
Respect for cultural diversity, co-existence and different forms of knowledge, including traditional and indigenous;
Respect for the varying conditions in which education systems, artistic practices and markets operate in Africa;
Professional conduct and improvement of the quality of services in the pursuit of best practices while rooted in African experience;
To human rights as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially the right to freedom of creative expression, and anti-discrimination on the basis of gender, language, culture, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religious belief, health, age and disability.
 MASK'S HISTORY
A professional artist, a painter, Alla Tkachuk first visited Kenya in 2006, initially aiming to paint members of local tribes. She offered to give painting workshops to children in schools and subsequently discovered from that the arts are not taught in schools. This experience led to the creation of the Mobile Art School in Kenya (MASK).
“As I watched the children painting with excitement and enthusiasm for the first time in their lives, I asked myself whether it was the ability to paint that I wanted to enable in these young people. The answer was, of course not. The real purpose was to enable them all to become complete human beings, capable of achieving their potential and leading successful and productive lives. The real purpose was to ignite their engines of creativity!
The MASK experience has shown that ‘art education’ can be a vehicle for creative education: education for creativity, innovation, and culture. I came also to an understanding that creative education is not only of great benefit to an individual’s development but is a key to societal and economic development at large.” (Alla Tkachuk, 2012)
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MASK'S ACHIEVEMENTS
In 2006 we began with nothing but a desire to bring creative education and human development to children in Kenya.
SINCE we:
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have worked in 20 schools in Kenya, transforming local arts and raising children's self-confidence and motivation. More that 25,000 children have benefitted from MASK over the last 5 years, as well as teachers, schools, and local communities.
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run Art for Peace, Art Teachers Training and Artists4Aid programmes.
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have organised exhibitions in Kenya, France, the UK and USA.
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during the Kenyan post-election violence of 2008, organised exhibition of Peace Art by child victims of the conflict at the Russian Embassy in Nairobi. National television channel, KTN, filmed the exhibition and reported on it in their daily youth programme, 'Str8up'; Kenyan radio stations recorded children's peace messages and broadcasted them nationally!
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Organised an exhibition at the Kenyan Embassy in Paris,19 January-18 February 2010. The Kenyan Ambassador The Hon. E. Odembo together with IIEP UNESCO Director Mark Bray opened the event.
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In May 2010, the leading Kenyan newspaper, The Daily Nation, visited our art workshops and published an article about our work, “Lessons from Mobile Art School”.
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In January 2011, another leading Kenyan newspaper, The Star, wrote an article about us (read in News).
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In 2010, held our first major exhibition of our children’s artwork at RaMOMA (Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art) in Nairobi, Kenya.
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From 2012 run MASK National Art Competition for the Young in Kenya and Esta Africa, with the final shows held at the Nairobi Art Gallery and Saatchi Gallery in London.
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28 November 2011 - 5 April 2012, exhibiting at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scolars, Washington DC.
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WHERE WE WORK
(click on the map to enlarge)
We work mainly in Kenya rural areas:
Narok,
West Laikipia,
Naivasha and
Nairobi.
See list of Our Schools
DIRECTORS AND STAFF
Patron:
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Trustees:
Dr Lyndsay Bird
Charles Dance
Tatiana Prokosch
Professor David N. Dilks
Advisory Board:
Dr Chege Githiora
Chairman of the Center for African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Wanja Michuki
Principal Councellor
Kenya High Commission in London
Staff:
Alla Tkachuk, Founding Director and Secretary
John Githiri, Deputy Director, Kenya
MASK's REPORTS & POLICIES
Authorisation Letter, Kenya Ministry of Education, 2011
Authorisation letter, Naivasha District Education Officer, 2009
Authorisation letter, Ngarua Division Education Officer, 2008
Annual Returns
MASK Annual Report April 2009- September 2010
MASK Memorandum and Articles of Association
MASK Code of Conduct
Child Protection Policy
Child Protection Code of Conduct
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This page was last updated on 12 May 2012