The creative holding the hands of peers

On July 7 last year, I walked into Nairobi Street Kitchen at around 8pm. It was Saba Saba Day and Raila had organised some maandamano protests in the Nairobi CBD.

As I approached town from Kipande Road (I had just left Banana), we were forced by the traffic police to alight at the Globe Roundabout, since nobody was allowed to go into town.

Since my destination was Mpaka Road on Westlands, I decided that I might as well walk. By the time I got there, a queue had formed at the entrance. Creatives Garage, an organisation that I had just learned about a few months earlier in February, was holding an awards show known as the Sondeka Awards.

The awards had various categories, including: Spoken Word, Live Music, Podcast, Short Films, Creatives Collectives, Traditional Art, Short Story, Poetry, Mobile App development, Judges Award and finally, Lifetime Achievement Award.

That evening, I had just come to accompany Natasha Muhanji, one of the writers at Qwani, and as fortune had it, she won the Short Story Award. Afterwards, there was a photo session, and as I noticed, everyone clamoured to take photos with one person clad in a purple suit.

With no idea who the person was, I asked around and was duly informed that she was Liz Kilili, also known as Thayu; the founder and managing director of Creatives Garage, the organisers of the event we had just attended. I became even more curious as the event was huge, and so I had to find out more about her.

HOW SHE STARTED

Liz had just completed school in the early 2010s, having gone to film school. She was so passionate about making films then and aspired to be a film director.

After scrambling to make some small projects, she tried presenting them to various media houses, such as Nation Media Group and Standard Group.

However, they were all rejected, either by the security guards who would throw them away to the dustbin, or the managers in the offices upstairs, who would say that they were too advanced and needed to be dumbed down for the average Kenyan mind.

The industry, she says, was full of gate-keepers, and seemingly, is still full of them to this date. Because, why else would a show be rejected on the pretext that it is too intellectual for the average Kenyan? Is it premised on the fact that media houses don’t want Kenyans to learn?

After unsuccessful shots at media houses, Liz gave up on that dream and decided to craft her own way, for where there’s a Liz, there’s definitely a way.

It started in 2013, when Adobe decided to do a Portfolio Review Event in different cities around the world. A Portfolio Review Event is simply an event where different creatives come together to showcase their portfolio to others and network. These include photographers, musicians, writers, filmmakers and advertising agencies.

Adobe asked who would be interested in running the event in Nairobi, and gleefully, Liz took up the chance. The British Council also volunteered to offer support in form of offering space, as well as providing publicity in the form of marketing. By the end of it all, the event had at least 40 creatives and many more guests.

It was so successful that even the next day, people kept asking when the next Portfolio Review would be. But deep inside, she wasn’t willing to do another event. Not for any other reason, but that she wanted to pursue filmmaking more. However, the number of emails asking for another event continued streaming in.

She says, “One guy even emailed me, asking for an internship. And that’s when my stance softened. I thought that maybe I could actually go back to that line. I realised that I could just do events and then get the intern to help curate them.”

ONE-STOP SHOP

Reflecting on her own journey, Liz decided to look for a sound producer who, just like herself, wanted to create films but was also struggling to find the opportunity.

She also decided to look for actors who were equally looking for opportunities to act but had none. And so, she decided she might as well just create a platform to bring them all together. She talked to them and her friends, too, to see how it goes.

On the same year then (2013), she created the Creatives Garage and launched it as a trust. She followed this by doing small events at Pawa254.

These included the Portfolio Reviews as she had done with Adobe, as well as Poetry Events. “Soon enough, donors got interested in what I was doing and even provided money to support it,” she adds.

Since there existed other organisations as her in the industry, she wanted to bring in something new. From her survey, she had noticed that all other organisations only appealed to one line of creatives. For example, Kuona Trust and The GoDown Arts Centre were only for painters.

Therefore, her solution was to start a multi-disciplinary space, which would have different creatives. The space would have writers, musicians, actors, film directors, script writers, AI gurus, illustrators and every other creative talent you could think of. Creatives Garage produces films, publishes books, records podcasts and even creates documentaries.

“The goal is to provide market access to these artists, train them wherever possible, and then give them a space to platform,” she says.

“In the end, we’re like a creatives database. Do you want a painter? Here’s one. Do you want a writer? Here’s one. Do you want an actor? Oh! We’ve got loads of them.”

It’s now been 11 years since Creatives Garage started, and it has housed 14,000 creatives in total during its lifespan. That’s like four per day. Impressive! And even then, it continues nurturing more.

Now, they even hold annual awards for the creatives (that’s how I found myself here in the first place). The Sondeka Awards was started in 2019 to bridge the gap between mainstream award ceremonies and innovative talents. Thus far, we can say that the Creatives Garage has achieved everything that Thayu intended it to, and even more.

PODCASTS TO PLAYS

In January 2023, Thayu decided to start a podcast to discuss the daily struggles that people go through. This was sparked by a show she watched, and so she retrieved her memories similar to the experience of the characters in the show.

Unlike other podcasters, she did not rely on udaku from her friends. She wrote down 10 episodes for Season 1, then got some voice actors to record them.

In January this year, she decided to do another 10 episodes for Season 2. “But even then, it still didn’t feel complete. I felt like there was a missing piece,” she said.

“After deep pondering, I realised that this podcast needs to live in a different format. A format where people can sit and see it. And that’s when the idea of a play came about.”

Despite having directed numerous films before, Thayu had never directed a play. This was bound to be her first. Why didn’t she choose to just do a film as she was used to?

“I wanted it to be multi-sensory. I wanted to involve the audience. I wanted them to see it. To feel it. The poetry, the dance, the music and the acting. And I also wanted to see their reaction. In films, none of these happens, at least as far as we know.”

Therefore, she picked 10 podcast episodes, those that talk about the themes of suicide, rape, death and sex. Next, she chose a producer, Hellen Masido. She told Masido what she wanted from the cast, and together, they did a closed call.

Among those selected from the auditions were: Muthoni Gathecha, who has acted on Netflix, Koome Kinoti, who’s acted on ‘Big Girl’ on Showmax, Brian Njong’e, who’s a musician, as evidenced by his Spotify, and Joseph Obel, who’s a performance artiste.

Others were Seise Bagbo, Tana Gachoka, Anita Njeri, Rian the Msani and Faith Rose. The stage manager would be none other than the talented Cha-Dota.

The play was finally showcased at the Braeside School on July 13, to a packed auditorium. It was a two-hour play, featuring seven different scenes. Each of the scenes contained a different point-of-view that took us through what the LGBTQ+ people have faced in their life in Kenya.

These included: their parents’ reaction when they realised that their kids are LGBTQ+, being taunted by their friends as kids, how the pastor would pray for them when they were brought to church, as well as how they’re profiled when they go for job interviews.

It truly was an eye-opener for me, for I definitely knew not about all this. It was also captivating, and each scene had me on the edge of the seat, not knowing what to expect next. All in all, I’d like to commend them for the boldness they possess.

As for Liz 'Thayu', I’d like to congratulate her for her entry into the field of plays. Clearly, she’s a Liz of all trades and master of them all. I cannot wait to watch her next piece of work.