By Sympathy Sibanda

Gbemi Adekanmbi is a creative whose need to solve issues around the creative sector mainly for women led her to create an all access group called ‘For Creative Girls’. This is a social enterprise that helps mentor and open up opportunities for females in the creative space. 

Growing up in Nigeria, in a family of artists, Adekanmbi realised that there is no clarity around what people in arts and humanities should really pursue with confidence. 

“I grew up in a house filled with creatives and I noticed that those growing their skills and influence in the arts sector have a lot of self doubt and don’t know how to navigate a lot of things. The path is not usually clear as there is a lot of unknown in what to do. Its like groping around in the dark. Seeing that I also studied BA in English there was a lot of language around not knowing what to do with that degree. This led me to shifting perspective from that to clarity, empowerment and growth,” she revealed.

The social enterprise has grown exponentially for the past five years with a global reach and relevant programs aimed at positive results.

“In the past 5 years we grew our community to 10 000 people globally. We have a known mentorship program and have had more than 700 sessions with close to 100 female creatives and artists mentored. Most have gone to have success in their endeavours like getting jobs, staging exhibitions, getting  published and hosting fashion shows,”Gbemi said.

The organisation has held meet ups in four countries namely Nigeria, France, Zimbabwe and Kenya. This has also been coupled with the use of story telling where their site has more than 300 stories shared from many countries leading to many partnerships with the private sector ,focused on supporting the emerging creative woman seeking for growth

“ I believe that creativity is essential on the world we want to see regardless of industry or societal structure. My work is to find a way to infuse that mindset in every industry. We need a future where art is in every sector and not excluded. My vision is to make female creatives and artists part of the world and confident enough  to work in any place she envisions” 

“Women are more endangered when it comes to these things as society takes care of men more. I want to see a lot of clarity to emerging female creatives in arts and humanities. I want to see a lot more empowerment and financial freedom”

For Creative Girls is a social enterprise whose scope continues to grow by empowering female creatives to be confident enough and making society to realise that arts and humanities are not divorced from the rest of the industries.