THREAD The cultural centre connecting people and driving change in rural Senegal

The cultural centre connecting people and driving change in rural Senegal

Thread

Over the last three years the remote artist residency and cultural centre Thread has become a valuable addition to Sinthian, a village in southeastern Senegal. A project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and championed by respected community leader Dr Magueye Ba, Thread aims to mix art with everyday life by hosting two to four artists from around the world at any given time, and by launching several initiatives in agriculture, learning and sustainable development. From music to farming, Thread enables change at the grassroots level. The local inhabitants also use the centre every day as a space to meet and socialise, charge their phones, study with solar light in the evenings (there is no electricity in the village), and host cultural gatherings.

“Sinthian is the geographic centre of communities on the river and it can be economically tough there, but Dr Ba has pioneered a lot of different projects,” says Nick Murphy, director of Thread. Having studied medicine in Dakar, Dr Ba has chosen to live in Sinthian for nearly two decades, during which time he has worked with US non-profit American Friends of Le Korsa (AFLK), running the local medical centre, building Sinthian’s first preschool and funding its teachers. “Over the years Dr Ba has acted as an incredible entrepreneur, doctor and active fundraiser, so that his community can benefit,” Murphy adds.

Designed pro bono by the award-winning New York-based architect Toshiko Mori, Thread’s building is a spectacular combination of vernacular techniques and contemporary geometry, built entirely by local labourers and craftspeople. The simple white walls are made from compressed earth bricks, while the sweeping roof is a grass thatch. Bamboo collects and stores rainwater, used for agricultural projects during the eight-month dry season. And at the centre of the building is a large, open-air performance space that can be configured to accommodate audiences of up to 300 people, as well as small intimate gatherings. “The village kids play hide-and-seek in and around the walls,” says Murphy, emphasising the flexibility and informality of the space, and the degree to which it has become familiar to the local population. Senegalese environmental sustainability expert Moussa Sene acts as Thread’s general manager, and champions the centre’s agricultural projects. Under his watch, beekeepers in the area have changed over from using traditional harmful burning techniques to reach the honey, to methods that preserve the bees and the environment. Sene has also implemented the making of biocomposts and biopesticides among local farmers, minimising costs as well as nurturing the land. He also helps artists devise their plans when they arrive for the residency programme, allowing them to engage with the community in meaningful ways. “People come from far away to work with the locals, both learning from, and teaching them,” he says. “Mostly the artists adapt their projects after a few days of observation, making them more relevant.”

Thread was opened in 2015 with a concert by the Tambacoundabased rapper Neggadou, who became the centre’s first resident. Since then over 40 artists have passed through it doors from across Africa, Europe and the US. “During my residency, I wrote many songs for my album and I composed a special song that I sang in Pulaar — the local dialect — to pay homage to Thread and the village of Sinthian,” says Neggadou. “Now it has become a hymn to Sinthian and every time you cross the village, you hear it on the radios or being sung.”

After his time at Thread, Neggadou formed the arts collective Dugu Tigui Arts in Tambacounda. Its first task was to organise Tambacounda's Festival de l'Union, celebrating the diverse cultural practices in Tamba with Senegalese hip hop concerts. In partnership with the Tambacounda Cultural Center and Thread, the inaugural 2015 festival was attended by thousands of people and was a huge success.

At the same time that Neggadou was at Thread, Sister Rose Berthe Coly, a local nun, came for a residency. She taught a large group of women how to make soap and they invested the profits earned from selling it into an area of land they now use to grow peanuts. These women formed the Sinthian Women’s Association, and have taught two nearby villages the craft as well. “The real innovation at Thread is in linking art to agriculture, health and education,” says Sene. “I believe in the bottom-up approach and discussing development with the population to effect change.” Dakar-based weaver Johanna Bramble came to Thread in February 2017. She discovered that three older Sinthian women knew how to hand-spin cotton, making a highly sought after material that Bramble had only ever been able to source outside of Senegal. These women had no idea how valuable their skills were, and the younger local women had written the practice off as an outdated craft. Bramble worked with both generations of women to relaunch spinning in Sinthian, so that the skill would not be lost and they all had a source of income.

Another resident was Yelimane Fall, a Senegalese artist based in Pikine. Well into his 70s, Fall has long used Islamic calligraphy and education to reach disadvantaged young people in the Dakar area. At Thread, he drew on the spiritual aspects of his work to connect with Sinthian’s religious community. Most significantly, he spearheaded a cultural initiative in five nearby schools where the curriculum is taught in French, although many of the children do not speak this language at home. Fall encouraged the schools to make time every week for celebrating local, ethnic traditions with dance and theatre, giving them a place in contemporary life.

“When selecting artists, we’re always sensitive to the community,” says Murphy. “At first it was invitation only, then we did a call-out. But the programme is quite self-selecting. Only certain types of people are drawn to this kind of experience.”