African Digital Heritage is delighted to be part of the second round of the Cultural Heritage For Inclusive Growth Programme (CH4IG) CH4IG in Kenya was conceived as a collaboration between British Council and Kenyan delivery partners. The programme was driven by a deep interest in translating cultural heritage for the next generation. It aims to not only review and bolster the status of cultural heritage, but also consider the various approaches to inclusive growth in Kenya.
In this second round, ADH will focus on the impact of devolution in the counties, taking a closer look at the capacities of community based cultural practitioners and cultural departments in the counties. This was informed by learnings from the Skills4Culture pilot phase where we discovered that most county cultural departments are under-skilled, insufficiently funded and require support to effectively engage with cultural heritage in a new, dynamic, and inclusive way.
The second round of Skills4Culture will take on a co-production angle. It will incorporate insights from community based cultural practitioners and county cultural departments through site visits, one on one interviews and collaborative research briefs.
The project will unpack what support looks like for the county based cultural practitioners, what skills they deem important to run their programs and possible areas of collaboration between the county cultural departments and the community-based cultural practitioners. This project presents a unique opportunity to explore cultural programs beyond a national scope while allowing for the incorporation of perspectives from both rural and urban spaces. Although our focus will be on a few counties in this phase, we acknowledge that this is just a small part of a much larger picture and aim to one day expand our research to offer a more comprehensive analysis of this diverse sector.
ADH will thereafter create a cultural resource toolkit, informed by the research, that will guide community based cultural heritage practitioners and their county government departments on how to tailor cultural programs suited to their own needs. The toolkit will be piloted in three counties and will include training resources, assessment methodologies, audience engagement strategies and other significant resources identified by the practitioners.
