Art workshop at BaTonga Museum

From 3-10 April 2004 BaTonga Museum in Binga conducted an inspiring wood cut workshop facilitated by Patrick Mweemba, a well-known Tonga artist from Zambia.

Last year in September BaTonga Museum had put up an exhibition by Patrick Mweemba showing a selection of his wood and lino cut works. The exhibition was very well received by the local community and the visitors were especially fond of the way Patrick Mweemba portrayed the local Tonga life.

Some visitors were inspired by the nature of wood and lino cut prints and proposed the idea to organise a workshop to introduce these techniques to the local community. Encouraged by the interest to learn more about this art work the Museum arranged to set up a wood cut workshop and requested Mweemba to come and teach the participants. Patrick Mweemba agreed to facilitate the workshop.

The workshop was conducted during the week before Easter and a number of 18 participants coming from the local community joined the workshop to learn about the art of wood cut and printing and to try to produce their own artworks. Artistically the participants had varying backgrounds some being painters or wood carvers while others engaged in art work for the first time. All of them were eager create their own works and the results were impressive presenting some promising .potentials among the local artists.

One of the objectives of the workshop was to encourage the participants to deal with the local culture and portray the daily life of the Tonga people.

This objective was certainly met with all pictures showing various cultural motives and different aspects of life within the Tonga society. As a visitor coming from outside you thus actually learn a lot about the Tonga culture from viewing the exhibited pictures.

 Another objective of the workshop was to promote the local artists and get the community involved in the work of the museum. Here the artworks produced at the workshop speaks for themselves, showing a great deal of engagement among the participants as well as interest from other members of the community, who visit the exhibition. After the workshop some of the participants still volunteer to attend the exhibition during some days to help to explain their work to visitors.
The exhibition is still open and definitely worth visiting.