Nairobi, like all large cities, is both familiar and unfamiliar. It has Dublin levels of friendliness, bad traffic, one of the world’s largest urban forests and a remarkable national park where giraffe roam against a backdrop of the city skyline.

It is also a city characterised by a high concentration of shopping malls. Generally, I find malls uninspiring places. But I recently spent the guts of a week in one of Nairobi’s, bluntly named The Mall, in the Westlands area of the city. This is the setting for Kilele, a brilliant festival showcasing East Africa’s experimental music and music technology scene. The festival is now in its third year. Here, you can clearly see how an urban post-retail context can be transformed into something to benefit young and creative people.

One of Kilele’s founders, David Tinning, also cofounded Santuri East Africa, a community-driven music innovation hub based in The Mall. The Mall was built in 1990, “but it had kind of lost its lustre,” he told me. “A lot of the brands moved out. Then Covid hit and even more of the tenants left. So there were all these empty spaces.”

Tinning praised the vision of the owner of the shopping centre, Biki Kangwana, who decided to offer space to arts collectives for cheap rent. They came: a VR studio, BlackRhino, and a basement club called The Mist, focused on boundary-pushing electronic music. Santuri opened a classroom, and then, in what was a vacant hair salon, an office and studio space.

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Across the festival, the shopping centre brimmed with poetry and instrument-building workshops, panel discussions, clothes and jewellery stalls from local designers, visual art installations, performance art, DJ sets, and live music performances.

The success of the festival has risen – literally – through the building. There is a covered car park-type area which hosts a stage and bar. Above that, an outdoor bar, beer garden and restaurant, with DJs and a live performance area. Work is ongoing even after the festival has wound down. A DJ booth is being installed this week, Tinning said, “and sound systems are being built by a local crew. The purpose of The Mall is to make culture a lot more accessible ... There’s no pressure to consume”.

On the upper roof, there’s a skatepark. “The skaters spend nothing,” Tinning says, “and that’s down to socio-economic factors. They don’t have spending money. But, they’re bringing culture.” Traditional tenants are also benefiting. A ground-floor cafe immediately noted an uptick in custom when artists began to move in.

Cities are not like for like, but models can be transferred. Many of the issues young artists in Nairobi face in terms of socialising and expressing themselves creatively – limited access to space, expense, a shortage of DIY venues encouraging experimentation – are the same ones young Dubliners face.

On average, Irish shopping centres do not have vacancy issues, although some do. As of June 2025, the vacancy rate in Irish shopping centres stood at 3.1 per cent.

[ Ireland’s commercial property problem: 30,000 vacant premisesOpens in new window ]

But more broadly, the commercial vacancy rate across Ireland is now higher than in the aftermath of the property crash. This is a remarkable reality when you consider how prominent the conversation about the level of commercial vacancy was at that time, when the sight of pulled-down shutters and whitewashed windows on our streets became – along with ghost estates – a tangible illustration of economic chaos. The Central Bank has also predicted a 2026 Dublin office vacancy rate of 19 per cent.

Vacancy is a blight, but it can be an opportunity. Cultural activity in what was dead space increases pro-social behaviour and footfall that in turn benefits businesses.

Where Ireland is failing is in an approach to vacancy that looks on urban areas as an ecosystem. Ecosystems require diversity to sustain and thrive. When there is too much of one thing – for example, massive apartment blocks without ancillary amenities like retail, social spaces, hospitality or services – a healthy ecosystem cannot emerge. This is why developments that are bereft of anything much beyond “units” seem so soulless.

At The Mall in Nairobi, it isn’t just the boundary-pushing music and the artists creating it that offer inspiration. It is also the evidence of how space can foster a scene encompassing music, music technology, design, visual art, poetry, skateboarding – and the community and solidarity underpinning all of that collective expression. Dublin is in dire need of this kind of exciting grassroots activity.

By definition, things that happen organically can’t be created from the top-down. But scenes-in-waiting can be facilitated. No matter where in the world you are, when vacant space is offered to artists, good things happen. That is true of The Mall in Nairobi – and with a bit of leadership, support, and open-mindedness, it could also be true of vacant commercial space in Dublin.

© The Irish Times