'Simsalabims'.
George Adegite is a Dutch illustrator, writer, graphic designer and creative strategist. He is known for his many community-driven projects in the Amsterdam Zuidoost borough, which included a marketing and design agency for recording artists, a streetwear fashion line and the DIY comic book series 'Simsalabims' (2022- ), in which he chronicles stories of local residents.
Early life and career
George Adegite was born in 1989 in Sittard, in the south-eastern Dutch province Limburg, into a family with Nigerian roots, but spent most of his childhood in Amsterdam. He was raised in the Bijlmermeer neighborhood of Amsterdam's Zuidoost borough, which is characterized by its cultural diversity. An avid drawer since his childhood, he grew up reading the Dutch Donald Duck weekly and Willy Vandersteen's 'Suske en Wiske' comic series, but noticed there weren't any comics around for people with a non-Dutch cultural heritage. While attending the Graphic Lyceum, Adegite had an apprenticeship with the DDB advertising agency. When one of the firm's illustrators dropped out, the eighteen year-old intern remarked with confidence: "Oh, but I can do that too". When he made some sketches, his creative director was convinced, and handed him some assignments. This proved a decisive moment, as Adegite then went to study advertising at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy in Rotterdam, from which he graduated in 2015.
Creative projects
In his professional life, Adegite has worked on a variety of projects, which are often community-driven. Together with his childhood friend Karim Khamis, he founded Cablai in 2010, a marketing and design agency for recording artists and music labels. With their agency, they also developed the web documentary series 'Bims In De Lobby' (2020-2021) for broadcasting corporation VPRO, in which Adegite interviews the inhabitants of his Bijlmer flat, listening to their stories and asking them about the stigmas and prejudices their neighborhood is subjected to. Between 2015 and 2023, George Adegite was a creative coach for Rambler Social Venture, an authentic streetwear fashion label designed and created by street youth from Amsterdam, London and São Paulo. Since 2015, he has designed his own streetwear fashion under the aGeorge label.
'Simsalabims'.
Simsalabims
After concluding his VPRO documentary series, Adegite noticed there were many more stories to tell from his neighborhood. Instead of filming them, he decided to capture them in comic format. Each episode of his 'Simsalabims' strip brings the story ("tori") of one of the Bijlmer inhabitants. The strip is written with influences from Smibanese, a multilingual mixture of Dutch, English, Sranan Tongo, Papiamentu, Spanish and Arab expressions. What initially started in 2022 as a community project for his own Geldershoofd flat, was by January 2024 turned into a monthly comic book in a print run of 2,000 copies for the entire Zuidoost neighborhood. While Adegite puts copies of his comics in the mailboxes of his 400 direct neighbors, other enthusiasts can pick them up at the various locations of the Amsterdam public library. Shortly after the start in 2022, Adegite's initiative was widely covered in the Dutch media, and was awarded the Dutch Creativity Award for its relevancy and cultural impact.
George Adegite.