Lola Kenya Screen’s Skills-Development Programme in Creative Entrepreneurship Marks 10th Year!

We mark our 10th year of equipping children and youth with practical skills in creative and cultural entrepreneurship in 2014.

This programme, incepted in March 2005, was initially offered under ArtMatters.Info (under whose umbrella Lola Kenya Screen was founded and operated till 2009!) with the aim of helping entrench arts criticism and appreciation in eastern Africa.

Some of the beneficiaries of the programme so far have been students from University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Maseno University, Uganda Christian University, Kampala International University, Daystar University, Nairobi Film School, Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Tangaza College, Kenya Polytechnic and Kenya Private Sector Alliance.

Subject to availability of resources, we continue to offer a 7-12-week Internship Programme every three months to out-of-school youth and final year students of Communication, Information and Mass Media (Journalism, Mass Communication, Public Relations, Video/TV Production, Web Development/Graphic Design) and related subjects.

Participants in our 12-week programme get the chance to conceive and implement projects through our hands-on, learn-as-you-do mentorship as they work on our cultural journalism, video production, event planning and presentation, critical appreciation and media and information literacy projects.

Our daily cultural journalism and public relations, weekly school outreach, fortnightly mobile cinema, monthly film forum, quarterly internship and annual festival programmes offer ready platforms on which to gain these much needed skills in Kenya’s exam-focused education system.

A candidate has to apply—including one’s curriculum vitae and motivation with an introduction/request from school—to be considered.

Over the years we have also extended our skills-development programme beyond Kenya to Uganda, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe and South Africa where we have helped equip participants with skills in areas as diverse as arts criticism, human rights, online publishing, and film and arts criticism.

We are also liaising with like-minded organisations in the development of guidelines on arts journalism, criticism and media and information literacy.