Lifelyn UK is a Ghanaian Art dealership based in London. They intended to host an exclusive Art Exhibition showcasing the best works on behalf of one of their client – Mr. Sami Bentil. Mr. Bentil, son of a UN Diplomat, is one of Ghana’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and is covered frequently in Ghanaian media.
The chosen themes of this exhibition focused largely on altruistic themes stemming from Subsaharan African cultures – a few which being Humanism, Religious Spirituality and Ancestor Veneration. After much deliberation, I had advised Sami and the team at LifeLyn to name the Exhibition – ‘Humanity’ as this best encapsulated the multiple themes we wished to incorporate into our exhibition.
Once we had collectively agreed on the basics, we then set about tackling our immediate obstacles. These included finding an appropriate venue to host our exhibition, arranging for invites to be sent out to be issued out, promotion and marketing of the event and deciding on a layout and look for the exhibition itself and finally an orderly itinerary of performers and speeches for the day.
As expected, our initial actions comprised of first agreeing and securing a venue for the exhibition and also drafting, designing and finalising marketing literature for the exhibition.
In terms of our chosen, I shortlisted several venues of which we agreed Willesden library in North West London, a small humble venue, located in a diverse vibrant part of London, which caters for all, regardless of who they are.
Instead of opting for a high profile venue, choosing Willesden library allowed us to save money for our budget at the same time and enable us to hire our desired performers for the day whilst simultaneously being able to invest more into higher quality marketing literature which were going to be issued out to various European and African high commissions around London.
Overall, the exhibition was very successful. Our meticulous planning and diligent execution enabled us to host and manage the exhibition with minimal issues.
We welcomed the high commissioners of Angola, Lesotho and Ghana respectively and overall received a positive reception from our visitors.
In addition, the highlight of our evening was also the fact that amongst many of Mr. Bentil’s works being sold, we were able to sell one of his more major works for £5000 (a speech by the customer can be seen in the video below). Below the video is also the invite letter we sent out to our most important guests for the night.