Creative hubs have potential to change the local arts landscape

Arts Focus with Raisedon Baya
THIS past week I was in Johannesburg, South Africa visiting a couple of hubs as part of a small team working with and being assisted by British Council to establish creative hubs in Bulawayo, Mutare and Harare.

Fortunately for Harare the city already has more than a couple of hubs that are visible and already trying to change the way young creatives work and create work. In Johannesburg we visited about four of these hubs which are basically core working spaces that encourage sharing and collaborations. We visited the The J & B Hive, JoziHub, Impact Hub and Business and Arts South Africa (BASA), which is not a hub itself but has done extensive research on hubs in a few African countries. Interesting enough one of the hubs (The Hive) was created and is run by a young Zimbabwean and his South African partner. It was also interesting to see companies like Google supporting one of the spaces. The South African tour came immediately after a week-long UK tour by seven hub managers, (one from Bulawayo), for purposes of benchmarking.

So for the uninitiated hubs are the buzz word these days, not only in the creative sector but in other sectors as well. Sectors like IT and SMEs are also experimenting with hubs and the idea of core working spaces. Hubs are nests mostly for freelancers.

They are like centres of convergence or meeting places for creative enterprise. Obviously they come in different sizes and shapes. However, creative hubs are about bringing together diverse talents, disciplines, and skills to intensify innovation. So why the excitement about hubs? And why now? And are these going to end the problems bedevilling the arts sector? One might ask. Well, to be honest, the problem in the arts will not be solved by one solution. Common sense will tell you this.

However, the reason for the excitement is more about the possibilities hubs bring or suggest. In many ways than one hubs suggest doing things differently, hubs suggest acknowledging everyone and working within a community. Hubs suggest togetherness and belonging. It is hoped that hubs will inspire cross disciplinary collaborations.

The reasons for hubs are many. But the immediate one is solving the problem faced by many young creatives and even the older ones. The problem of working spaces. Very few creatives can afford to pay rent for offices or workshops to work from. Most work from their homes, homes which are hostile to them as creatives in the first place. So now imagine your artiste has no space but really wanting to work getting a share of working space with several others. Imagine the same artistes not just sharing office space, imagine him/her collaborating with others, imagine him/her getting to share ideas and even getting some constructive criticism from his/her peers. Imagine this space they share being like a one-stop-shop for all services for his/her clients or customers. Imagine the young artistes with a backup system that is designed to push him/her towards success. That is all what hubs are about.

So what did the trip to South Africa teach us? The first lesson was that indeed the hubs are a potential game changer in terms of nursing ideas and encouraging collaborations. The second lesson was visually seeing the spaces in action and seeing how members were benefiting or can benefit from sharing a space together. Third lessons was that there was no one-size fit all model, that each hub was unique in its right and served a particular purpose. Fourth lesson was that hubs, properly managed, are viable businesses. Last but not least was perhaps that most hubs are created to serve a particular community and should not forget why they were created in the first place.

So here I’m already imagining young artistes having a common working space in Bulawayo and what that could mean to Bulawayo as the unofficial cultural capital of the country.