OPINION: Artistic Expression - The engine of a truly sustainable creative economy

By Prof Frederick B J A Ngala, PhD, MBS, OGW

For decades, the Kenya Music Festival has showcased our nation's diverse creative spirit but also offered us a stark reminder of its untapped potential.

This year, our guiding theme - "Enhancing the Creative Economy through Artistic Expression for Sustainable Development" - challenged us to look beyond the stage. It called on us to consider our ultimate purpose: not just to celebrate talent, but to nurture it into lasting careers and stable futures that contribute to national progress.

But what does "sustainable development" truly mean for a young artist? It means building a career that can withstand life's inevitable challenges. The path of a creative is often unpredictable, and a single unforeseen event can tragically derail a promising journey. True sustainability, therefore, is impossible without a foundation of security.

Our responsibility as educators thus extends beyond the stage. We have a duty to prepare these young artists for a world where talent alone is not enough. We must equip them with the resilience and practical skills needed to transform their creative passion into a sustainable career.

We have all witnessed how a brilliant, once-celebrated artist is forced to appeal for public contributions to cover a medical bill or is left languishing in poverty. The missing ingredient was never talent; it was the practical knowledge of how to protect and grow the wealth that talent creates.

This is where the Kenya Music Festival becomes more than just a stage; it becomes a classroom for an entire ecosystem. As students perform pieces on themes of insurance and wealth creation, they deliver a powerful message of financial resilience that ripples outwards, educating their teachers, adjudicators, and the vast audience.

To understand the urgency of this mission on a national scale, we can look to the lessons from the "Asian Tiger" economies like South Korea and Singapore. Their remarkable growth from developing nations to global economic powerhouses was fueled by a deliberate culture of high domestic savings.

This underscores a profound truth: a culture of saving and protection is not a byproduct of wealth, but a prerequisite for creating it. The question for us as educators, then, is how do we begin to instill this culture in our children?

The answer lies in using the arts as our most valuable teaching asset. Fundamentally, this shared mission is framed by globally recognized principles. The World Bank, for instance, recognizes that financial literacy is a cornerstone of early childhood development and, by extension, the long-term human capital that drives any prosperous society.

This economic principle is proven in the classroom, with research from leading institutions like Johns Hopkins University consistently showing that arts integration leads to deeper comprehension of complex subjects and boosts critical thinking skills.

It achieves this by shifting the learning process from passive memorization to active creation, compelling students to analyze information, solve problems, and synthesize disparate ideas into a new, coherent whole.

This practical application of life skills serves as a vital bridge to the national educational framework crafted by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD). While the Competency - Based Curriculum (CBC) introduces the theory of risk and financial planning, our partnerships take these concepts from the textbook to the stage, making them tangible, memorable, and deeply relevant.

It is within this carefully constructed framework - our duty as educators, powered by the arts, and validated by global and national policy - that our partnership with Equity Group this year found its perfect purpose. As the main sponsors, their theme of "Securing Lives Transformed and Wealth Created" provided the crucial resources and focus to bring our educational vision to life.

This synergy was demonstrated powerfully by the students themselves. Through memorable songs, they conveyed the wisdom of "saving for tomorrow." Through compelling skits, they illustrated how a community safety net and tools like insurance act as a shield, allowing creativity to thrive.

Ultimately, enhancing our creative economy is a two-part mission. It requires us, as educators, to ignite the spark of artistic expression and empower our youth with the tools to protect that flame. By integrating financial resilience into our creative education, we are not just nurturing artists but building the secure, prosperous, and sustainable creative economy of tomorrow.

Let this partnership serve as a direct challenge to policymakers, fellow educators, and corporate leaders. The time for passive sponsorship is over. Let’s move beyond writing cheques only and instead actively integrate our expertise into the educational fabric of our nation. This is how we can collectively build the secure, prosperous, and sustainable creative economy of tomorrow.

The writer is the Chairman, Kenya Music Festival