name. Our legal advisor, Ishan Kapila, told us the best thing was to form a Trust to be run by a small group of trustees. In addition to Ishan and Wendy, we had a PR guy with good media connections; there was a woman who was a big money-hitting financial consultant, a Museum representative, and of course Arvind Vohra.
Danda: Who’ s still a Kuona Trustee today … Rob: Yes. I remember driving around at night to their houses to get them to sign different copies of the Trust Deed so that I could take it to the bank to open an account. Then I remember standing in Arvind’ s office, wondering what to call this Trust. He said“ What’ s the Swahili for‘ see’ or for‘ looking’”? I said“ Ku... ona- right, that’ ll do!”. Not a great name when you think of it, but a name that Arvind and I came up with under extreme pressure. And there we were- there was no money left, as the small amount we had raised from a local motor company had all gone on basic renovations. At the time I was playing regularly in a band and sometimes when we got paid, we put some money in an account for giving to good causes. So I approached the guys in the band and asked if Kuona could be a good cause, and they kindly gave us Ks. 14,000. That basically paid for us to buy a telephone and get it connected- I remember the number was 751515 and it was a good number.
We then needed someone to answer the phone and run the office, and after a couple of disasters, Patricia joined Kuona. We started raising money a bit here and there: from the British Council to do some women’ s workshops, led by Theresa Musoke; we got a bit of money from Serena Hotels through one of our trustees because he was well connected there. We got a great project with the Commercial Bank of Africa: we started putting artwork in the windows of their bank downtown on Wabera Street, the head office. They gave us their window display so we had a regularly changing, very public exhibition of art work from Kuona. It was all good but there were just little bits of money.
Danda: When did the artists start coming in? Rob: The artists started coming in immediately, and my philosophy was, let’ s leave the door open and hang a sign which says Artists Welcome and see what happens.
Danda: And that’ s what you did you said: Artists Welcome? Rob: Yes, Artists Welcome, and sure enough they started trickling in. I had this idea that we should be selective, not just have anyone. So I formed a notional committee with artists who were friends like Meek Gichugu, Sane Wadu, Elijah Ogira and Omega Ludenyi. The deal was that before you could use the studio
Fred abuga in the communial studio
Section1: Technical
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