Lamu beckons art lovers for Valentine’s weekend

The first ever Lamu Arts Festival will be happening on the island this coming Valentine’s Day weekend, starting from Thursday through Sunday February 15.

Such a festival was practically a foregone conclusion following the inception of the Lamu Painters Festival several years ago and then shortly thereafter, the Lamu Hat Contest, both of which were launched by the retired German restauranteur Herbert Menzer.

Lamu has also been effectively marketing itself as the perfect place to hold open-air festivals, such as its annual Cultural Festival, the island’s annual Yoga Festival and the long-standing Maulid Festival.

But this is the first time Lamu will host both local and international artists – including musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers and jua kali milliners (or hat makers) for a four-day event.

The festival will feature lots of live music, visual arts (including sculpture, painting and photography) and even a “Mad Hatters Dhow Race” as a finale event of the fun-filled four days.

But what is likely to be the major highlight of the Valentine’s Day fete is the third Lamu Hat Contest that will be held on Shela Beach, starting at 9am next Saturday and running up until the judging by both local and international artists – namely Chelenge van Rampelberg, Sophie Walboeffe and El Tayeb Dawelbeit.

The Hat Contest began as a local event started, according to Herbert Menzer, by local construction workers who got bored wearing the ordinary crash-helmet type safety gear.

Some of them decided to get creative and enhance their ordinary head wear with all sort of paraphernalia –­ everything from grass, seeds, reeds, shells and beads to cloth and cardboard – creations that transformed the hats into marvelously imaginative and often silly-stylised head-dresses.

The first Hat Contest was in 2010 and around 70 workers took part. The second time round, the numbers ballooned as did the artistic innovations; the hats got ever-more outlandish and original as the beach was flooded with happy “mad hatters”.

This year’s Hat Contest is bound to be even bigger than years past because the Anidan Children’s Art and Craft Centre got involved and launched their own Junior Hat Exhibition and Contest.

The contest is no longer just a construction workers’ parade. It will still be a jua kali event in the sense that no professional milliners are likely to join in.

In future the Lamu Hat Contest could very well become a global attraction comparable to the like the annual English Ascot Hat show that gets attended by British royals and other chic madams who love to be seen donning fancy hats in the open air. The paparazzi may start showing up just to get snap shots of these ingenious jua kali hats.

But in addition to hats, there will be music concerts on Friday and Saturday nights. They will feature Lamu Music4Peace artists on Friday at Mkunguri Square and Soul Music by Maia von Lekow and the Kaya Collective on Saturday on Shela Beach.

There will also be an Art and Craft Fair running all four days in Mkunguri Square as well as several visual art exhibitions in the Lamu Fort Museum, featuring water colours by Sophie Walboeffe, sculptures by Chelenge van Rampelberg and Joachim Sauter, photography by Roland Kemp and Corrie Wingate and paintings by Adam Musa and other members of the Lamu Artists Association.

The official opening of the Lamu Arts Festival will be on Friday night at the Lamu Fort followed by an open air concert at the Square featuring Men Azzer, Nazizi and Shamir among other musicians with the Lamu Music4Peace Arts.

The whole event is under the patronage of the Lamu County Government, which is partnering with the Lamu Painters Festival, Lamu Artists Association, Jambojet, Diamond Beach Village and One Vibe Africa.