The GoDown > The Story

The Godown Arts Centre is established to nurture excellence and innovation in Kenyan artists.
It provides studios, workspaces, rehearsal rooms and performance areas for performing and visual artists, to meet the need for their own space where they can experiment, create and share ideas together.

Here is a small video clip of what we have been able to achieve.

The Godown also aims to promote the value of artists to society by encouraging the public to attend and support its arts programs and shows.
The Arts Centre is situated on Dunga Road, en route to South B residential estate. It is a few minutes away from Nyayo Stadium and the City Centre.
The Centre occupies approximately 80,000 sq feet of former industrial warehouses and workshops, which in 2003 (and continuing) underwent renovation and conversion to become Nairobi’s first performing & visual Arts Centre.

With the first stage of renovations complete, the Centre is now occupied full-time by several local artist organisations including Kuona Trust, Sarakasi Trust, Nairobits Trust, Karamu Trust, Twin Roots, Ramoma, MedevaTV, Phoenix Players and Kete Bul Studios.
These groups together provide opportunities for development in visual arts, acrobatics, cyber design, film and video making, playwriting, and music recordings.

HISTORY

As there was no local reference for the creation of an arts centre in Kenya, or even East Africa, ideas were sought from outside the continent about how such facilities might be established and structured, how financial resources could be sourced, how programs might be developed and sustained, etc. This was very useful research as it enabled the formulation of an initial centre concept, to be tested and adjusted to suit the local Kenyan environment.

The Ford Foundation awarded a grant for the acquisition and renovation of a space for the Centre. But the search for a suitable building was not easy. After various possibilities failed - an empty primary school, an old cinema hall in a busy shopping centre, an old food-manufacturing warehouse – the current warehouse was found, two years after the search began.

At the end of January 2003, the Centre entered into a lease agreement with the multinational car company that owns the warehouse it currently occupies, to use the space for artistic and cultural activities.