The Drill #1: The Gathering
The Drill #1 – Press Release → thedrill.org
The Drill is a response to an art world that has gradually become a production-centric industry, that keeps on demanding so much from its practitioners, with little consideration for their wellbeing. As an alternative learning system, it is a clarion call to artists, creative directors, curators, cultural producers – all who work to continue to keep the ecosystem that is the art world running – by widening scope of knowledge in order to ensure sustainability. The Drill focuses on four main fields; creative practices, management, law, and healthcare (physical and mental). We believe that all artists need to have a basic understanding of the role of these fields in order to survive without losing focus on what they do and why they do it. The aforementioned fields have been chosen because of how critical they are to a practitioner’s development and their ability to sustain their practice.
The concept of The Drill is borrowed from the world of military training – the term drill is defined as a method of instruction characterized by systematic repetition of concepts, examples, and practice problems. It is about disciplined and repetitious exercise, used as a means of consolidating soldiers into battle formations and familiarizing them with their weapons. At The Drill, our aims are the same – to build, through consistency and precision, an industry in which arts practitioners are not only internally ready to face the battlefield that is the capitalist world, but who are familiar with the weapons at their disposal.
In 2020, we will host a series of events engineered to educate and train African art practitioners (those living in the continent, and those of the diaspora) in basic skills with regards to management, health and law. The first program, The Drill #1: The Gathering is a 5-hour online seminar taking place over the course of two days. All the facilitators of the workshop are professionals who have either excelled in balancing their art practice with the business of the art, or those from other fields (law, medicine and mental health) who are particularly interested in the arts and how art practitioners can build new capabilities to create sustainable lives. The current line-up of facilitators includes: Emeka Okereke (visual artist, founder and artistic director of Invisible Borders Trans-African Organisation), Claire Solery (founder of A Million Dots, Co-convener of MACAAL Bootcamp), Babjide Adeniyi-Jones (Visual Artist), Tobi Adebowale (Chairman, Governing Council of the Nigerian Bar Association Young Lawyers’ Forum), Maria Kuzmina (Curator at New Tretyakov Gallery, Russia), Angel Yinkore (Founder of Welcome To Truth, Mental Health Lead of STER), Rasheda Nalumoso (Cultural Producer in Uganda), and Adewunmi Oluwaseun (Medical Doctor). The event will take place via Zoom on 4th and 5th July.
Interested practitioners can apply and register for the event for free at thedrill.org/register. The project has been realised by Innocent Ekejiuba, a cultural producer living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. The Drill can also be found on Instagram and Twitter (@thedrillorg).
The Drill is organised with help from FourthCanvas Design Agency, Nigerian Bar Association’s Young Lawyers’ Forum, Invisible Borders Trans-African Organisation, and Independent Curators International (ICI).
