GoDown Arts Centre

This guide to the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi traces how a car-repair garage on Dunga Road, oil-stained concrete and corrugated iron, became a base for the city's artists after a group went looking for a home in 2001. It follows the nine months of renovation that kept the industrial bones intact, and the September 2003 opening that brought painters, dancers, musicians and filmmakers under one roof for the first time. Look up at the trusses built for rain over tractors, and listen for what they still carry.