NEW ARTS ORGS' FELLOWSHIPS TO AID ARTISTS

 PANGA SANAA AIMS TO ARM CREATIVES WITH NEW SKILLS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (Posted March 7, 2022)

(L-R) Alix Masson, Susan Gerhard, Marion Op ht Veld, Joyce Nzovu, and Greg Mwendwa of Panga Sanaa at Sarakasi Dome

Panga Sanaa is a brand new cultural project which sets out to achieve what, up to now, has been an impossible task, that of organizing Kenya’s creative sector.

Artists are notorious for being free spirits who in the past, haven’t wanted to be organized. Many haven’t wanted to be corralled or limited by anyone or anything. To them, rules created by organizations can feel like infringements on their freedom.

But the Panga Sanaa Fellowship, which was launched March 1^st at the Sarakasi Dome, aims to get around those roadblocks. “Rather than work with individual artists, our plan is to mobilize arts organizations,” Panga Sanaa’s media man Ken Kuyu tells BDLife.

When the call went out last December inviting arts organizations to apply to participate in an eight-month fellowship project aimed at building stronger associations by giving them skills to strengthen their structures of leadership and build their capacity to serve their members, Kuyu says the response was swift.

“We received 70 applicants, but we could only select ten. Now we’ll be training three [fellows] from each organization,” he adds.

Initially, the fellowship training was planned to focus on specific creative sectors, namely digital arts, fashion, and music. But the focus shifted once the applications came in. “There were few from the fashion sector and more from the visual arts,” says Marion Op het Veld, Sarakasi Trust’s managing director who, as the project director, will be hosting project activities at the Dome during its eight-month life-span.

According to Alex Masson, one of the two curriculum designers of the project, the first [‘incubator’] phase of the training will be once a week for three months. It will take place at the Dome and focus on four main areas, namely Governance and Leadership, Membership models, Organization development, and Policy and Advocacy.

“There will be a lot of peer-to-peer learning in class,” says David Muriithi, the project’s other curriculum designer, underscoring the participatory nature of the training.

Then, during the second five-month phase, the fellows will be back in their respective fields where there will be more mentoring and follow up on the implementing of the skills shared in the first phase of the training. Describing phase two as a time of consolidation, Muriithi adds it will be a time when the trainers will be checking in on the fellows to see how best they can be supported as they implement some of the ideas they’ve acquired.

The Kenya government was represented at the launch by the Director of Culture in the Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Heritage, Dr Lagat Kiprop who expressed his full support for the project.

Panga Sanaa is being assisted by German Cooperation, GIZ, and Goethe Institute, all of which have been consistently supportive of Kenyan creatives. In this instance, GIZ’s Joyce Kanze Nzovu noted that one of the advantages of Kenyan creatives getting organized is there might be less duplication of efforts on the creatives’ part.

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                 Professor Kimani Njogu speaks to Panga Sanaa moderator Greg Mwendwa at PSF launch at Sarakasi Dom

That is the hope as the creatives begin, through the training, to start working more closely together. Another benefit of the training, says Masson is that creatives will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the roles of policy and advocacy.

Prof. Kimani Njogu, who will be addressing those topics during the training, spoke briefly about how he gained his practical skills in advocacy, particularly advocacy for culture. He explained how policy is critical to having a framework through which creatives can address the Government with their concerns. He noted that at Independence, there was no Culture policy because lawmakers thought of culture as traditional dance and nothing more. Yet by the time the new Constitution of 2010 was being crafted, he and a small number of committed creatives insisted Culture had to be included. Otherwise, creatives would be in danger of having no grounds to defend themselves against pirates, con artists, and crooks. The knowledge, practical skills and strategic tools that he will be sharing during the training will be among the most relevant that artists will need to serve their organizations well.

As the launch was coming to a close, the list of ten (minus one) organizations whose members will take part in Panga Sanaa was shared. They include the Photographers Association of Kenya, Art Society of Kenya, Kenya National Visual Artists Association, Alliance of Slum Media Organizations (Africa Grassroots Media Alliance), Association of Animation Artistes Kenya, Filmmakers in Kenya Association, Kenya Association of Music Producers, Kenya Musicians and Performers Association, and Association of Visual Artists and Collectives.