Local artist initiates art project in Rwanda

Artists collaborate to raise awareness about genocide in Rwanda and Darfur

Between teaching printmaking classes, GCSU’s professor Lauren Sleat is organizing an art show to raise awareness about genocide as well as helping Rwanda genocide survivors get back to work in a project she’s calling the Le’gume Project.

Sleat has been to Rwanda and has seen how the genocide affected the lives of the people there. Sleat taught at Green Hills Academy which was founded by Jeannette Kagame, the wife of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. Sleat was encouraged to teach in Rwanda by her former student, the Kagame’s daughter.

“Paul Kagame has done amazing things with Rwanda,” Sleat said. “It’s almost like nothing ever happened there. He has emphasized that Rwandans are all one people.”

Submitted by Lauren Sleat

Three of the children that Sleat taught in Rwanda during the summer of this year. She wants to reinstate the importance of creativity in the lives of the children and plans to do so with

The purpose behind the Le’gume Project is to help the survivors of the genocide, especially women and children, become self-sufficient as they provide for their households. Sleat’s partner in the project is Alexandra Howland, a student at the University of Southern California who taught in Rwanda with her.

“We first started the Le’gume Project after about a month in Rwanda, each of us wanting to foster and enhance the untaught artistic talents of our students, as well as other youth throughout Rwanda,” Howland said.

The Le’gume Project is still in progress, but Sleat and Howland hope the project will one day get to convert the students’ art into cloth, which will be done by the Rwandan people and will give them a steady source of income.

Sleat has another project in the works to raise awareness against genocide in general called Collab for Awareness.

Sleat will start paintings and will send them around to about 40 different artists around the U.S. who will add to the paintings or write music or poetry inspired by the works.

Collab for Awareness is in its beginning stages, and Sleat has just started doing the pieces she plans to send around.

“Hopefully the show will be around February 23 in Milledgeville. Though students aren’t directly involved in the project, I am open to them doing what they can,” Sleat said.

One of the contributors is artist and author Van G. Garrett, who has been collaborating with Sleat for many years.

“For me, it is like playing a pick-up game of basketball or a backyard game of football; however, we are all on the same team,” Garrett said. “Every artist is knowledgeable and we are working together on the ‘playground’ that is the world.”

Posted by Danielle Paluga on Sep 24 2010. Filed under Close Up, Special Sections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.