Artistic Pursuit

Since its inception in 2002, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme has been granting young artists the gift of knowledge, and the time to unleash their creativity

- Stephanie Zubiri

"If you're a teacher and you're not learning from your students, then you're not really teaching, are you?" filmmaker Spike Lee asked during a mentor panel discussion at Rolex Arts Weekend, celebrated at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on September 10. Affirming the fluid and collaborative aspects of mentorship, the multi-award-winning director and New York University professor is one of four personalities perpetuating the tradition of passing on wisdom and knowledge of their craft to young artists as part of the 2020-2022 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Lee worked with Native American filmmaker Kyle Bell.

"The next generation are all important to me, and I look to them as my mentors," added British director Phyllida Lloyd, the woman behind the hit musical Mamma Mia! and the mentor of the Theatre category. Lloyd was working with protégée Whitney White, a gifted musical theatre artist of whom the former said: "Maybe she doesn't need a mentor, but I do, and she could be it. She can sit down at the piano and blow you away with her compositions, direct a play, act in it; there's not much she can't do."

Throughout the weekend's series of talks, intimate conversations and a multidisciplinary showcase of the fruits of two-year-long artistic collaborations, this feeling of mutual respect and admiration was palpable in both mentors and protégés. The other mentors in this cycle were artist Carrie Mae Weems for Visual Arts, whose protégée was Colombian mixed media visual artist Camila Rodríguez Triana; and singer-songwriter, director and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda for the Open Category, launched this year to promote interdisciplinary dialogue, who worked with Argentinian filmmaker Agustina San Martín.