Chief Nyamweya is an Illustrator, Content Creator, and Writer who I have known for the better part of a decade since the early days of Nairobi's iHub where we used to regularly attend events. I lost touch with Chief for a fair bit of time until sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic when through pure blind luck he and I met as part of a series of interviews for a documentary on the past, present, and future of Kenya's digital ecosystem. That particular documentary never got produced or aired as we expected but as events would have it our paths crossed recently when he was busy creating some media visibility for his latest creative endeavor in late 2022, known simply as Trust.
Trust is a graphic novel, motion graphic, and NFT collection that follows a storyline that reimagines Kenya. As far as I know, Trust is probably the most innovative creative initiative that I am aware of that even includes an NFT from a Kenyan perspective making it very much in line with the world's fast-growing but quite nascent Web3 paradigm. Trust is available in hard copy to purchase online or offline, is available online as an interactive motion graphic, and as an NFT collection that you can purchase using crypto like Ethereum.
In our conversation, Chief shared his life journey to date as someone who loved to doodle as a youngster, pursued education and a career as a lawyer and a chartered accountant before returning to his first love of creative art and design - talk about making a pivot. He also pursued his current vocation by getting a degree in the US as well as setting up a creative agency, Freehand Studios, that would explore African-themed stories and concepts from a localized perspective, delivered across digital and traditional mediums. Ultimately, all these twists and turns led him and his collaborators, Anne Connelly and Sarah Mallia, to create Trust.
Trust is set in an alternative African nation to tell the story of Moraa who is a young activist who together with the Sankofa collective use the power of blockchain technology to protect their community from cultural and ecological destruction. Trust uses the power of storytelling to explore themes of corruption, cultural & ecological preservation, historical injustices, communal trust, and land ownership. Trust is groundbreaking in the subject matter it covers as well as the source material which will be very familiar to most Kenyans albeit very revisionist in its execution. You can find out more about Trust at https://www.trustgraphicnovel.com/
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By Moses KemibaroChief Nyamweya is an Illustrator, Content Creator, and Writer who I have known for the better part of a decade since the early days of Nairobi's iHub where we used to regularly attend events. I lost touch with Chief for a fair bit of time until sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic when through pure blind luck he and I met as part of a series of interviews for a documentary on the past, present, and future of Kenya's digital ecosystem. That particular documentary never got produced or aired as we expected but as events would have it our paths crossed recently when he was busy creating some media visibility for his latest creative endeavor in late 2022, known simply as Trust.
Trust is a graphic novel, motion graphic, and NFT collection that follows a storyline that reimagines Kenya. As far as I know, Trust is probably the most innovative creative initiative that I am aware of that even includes an NFT from a Kenyan perspective making it very much in line with the world's fast-growing but quite nascent Web3 paradigm. Trust is available in hard copy to purchase online or offline, is available online as an interactive motion graphic, and as an NFT collection that you can purchase using crypto like Ethereum.
In our conversation, Chief shared his life journey to date as someone who loved to doodle as a youngster, pursued education and a career as a lawyer and a chartered accountant before returning to his first love of creative art and design - talk about making a pivot. He also pursued his current vocation by getting a degree in the US as well as setting up a creative agency, Freehand Studios, that would explore African-themed stories and concepts from a localized perspective, delivered across digital and traditional mediums. Ultimately, all these twists and turns led him and his collaborators, Anne Connelly and Sarah Mallia, to create Trust.
Trust is set in an alternative African nation to tell the story of Moraa who is a young activist who together with the Sankofa collective use the power of blockchain technology to protect their community from cultural and ecological destruction. Trust uses the power of storytelling to explore themes of corruption, cultural & ecological preservation, historical injustices, communal trust, and land ownership. Trust is groundbreaking in the subject matter it covers as well as the source material which will be very familiar to most Kenyans albeit very revisionist in its execution. You can find out more about Trust at https://www.trustgraphicnovel.com/