But my teaching is not limited to university students. I have straddled different categories and classes of people within the society. I have taught … - Peju Layiwola

In developing the psychomotor and entrepreneurial skills of the youth in Lagos State schools, we will work with animal bones, coconut shells, animal horns, and shells in making a variety of aesthetic and functional objects. We have evolved a system where secondary school students, university students and local artisans in Surulere can learn and share skills with one another with the purpose of enhancing tourism potentials in Lagos State.

People producing arts, all along the roads, on the streets; everywhere and you begin to know that this is a city of Art.

As an artist and academic, I believe one’s work should impact the community. I have found an avenue for exploring this notion through the art based, not-for-profit platform known as the Women and Youth Art Foundation which I founded in 2004. The impetus for this began in Benin. As a young girl, I would tag along with my mother to several community based programmes and workshops organised by the then Bendel State government on poverty alleviation. Much later at Ibadan in 1995, I started a small women’s group comprising a few unemployed nursing mothers. We discussed how we could help ourselves by sharing skills amongst ourselves. So we shared tips on culinary skills, childcare and arts within the group. Much later this group grew into a more structured platform with a wider outreach, engaging youth, women and disadvantaged groups in various arts and crafts for the purpose of economic empowerment.