What does a program designed to facilitate knowledge & experience sharing, and networking among cultural heritage practitioners, look like? For us at African Digital Heritage, it looks like tailoring training programs to speak to the contexts, collections and needs of the attendees of the program, so that as they learn from the experts, they can compare best practices, frameworks, and strategies together.
“Digital work does not take place in a vacuum. For it to be holistic and sustainable it must be underpinned by a core set of skills that take into consideration the eco-system, infrastructure and rights of practitioners, institutions and communities.“
In the series below we package salient points from the training sessions to allow practitioners, who were not in a position to attend, to learn a thing or two:
Fundraising for Cultural Heritage Programs
Previous research has shown that funding is the biggest factor holding back Kenya’s cultural heritage practitioners from achieving their goals. Without having proper training on fundraising, looking and applying for grants becomes an uphill task. For most practitioners, it was unclear which grants are out there, how they work, how one can specifically find ones that fit their projects, and what the best practices for putting together grant applications were.
George Gachara, an expert at fundraising and one of the founding partners at HEVA Fund – Africa’s first dedicated finance, business support and knowledge facility for creative industries, takes us through what it takes to run a financially sustainable cultural heritage project. He addresses the rule of the game for finding fitting funds, standing out, and how workers in the sector can improve their proposal writing skills.
Strategic Partnerships for Cultural Heritage Programs
In the Kenyan cultural heritage field, funding is very hard to come by. To circumvent this, practitioners have been looking for strategic partnerships in order to sustain their programs. However, while some of the participants have been able to sustain strategic partnerships, others do not even know where to start looking. Those that were successful in finding strategic partners, mentioned looking to improve their skills to nurture the partnership for years, while maintaining autonomy of their artefacts and program goals.
Anne Eboso, the Founder and Director of Rusinga Festival, and an expert on strategic partnerships, takes us through how to find partnerships can sustain cultural heritage programs financially by exploring all available possibilities, how to make sure that the partnerships are equal and aren’t exploitative, plus tips on how to contractually soundproof your partnerships.
Community Engagement for Cultural Heritage Programs
With whom do we produce, share and pass on culture? Our communities. Right? Yet, in practice, community related matters aren’t always so clear-cut as issues of mistrust have been raised between project implementors and host communities.
How then can practitioners include community choices and visions during program design and implementation? Raphael Igombo, The Head of Education and Public Programs at Fort Jesus National Museum, takes us through how to sustainably engage the community for successful program design and implementation. He addresses community mobilization, navigating politics, mapping stakeholders from the community that will steer the project to success, plus how to measure impact in an ever evolving setting.
Counties and Communities
13 years since the promulgation of the new constitution which advocated for a devolved government, county cultural heritage departments are still figuring out how to come up with mandates that serve their causes, while proactively working with cultural organizations/programs that function within their communities. While community organizations stated that their main problem was the uncertainty on what to expect from the county, county cultural departments are still figuring out how to internally lobby for culture to be considered equal to other disciplines within the departments.
Mutua Mulonzya, Director – Culture, Music & Arts in Makueni County and our resident expert on county-cultural heritage matters addresses in this video, the role of the county cultural heritage departments, plus the role of the community towards the successful protection, promotion and preservation of culture.
Copyright, Intellectual Property and the place of Traditional Cultural Expressions and Traditional Knowledge, in cultural heritage productions.
The field of intellectual property is inseparable when it comes to producing cultural heritage content. Knowledge on intellectual property is essential before commencing digitization projects. However, many practitioners in the space have felt that the field is vast and too difficult to grasp, and that there is need for the information to be packaged in a simple, straightforward language and format.
In this video Sharon Chahale-Wata, the Deputy Director – Training and Research at Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO), gives us an introductory short session on intellectual property, traditional knowledge and cultural expression, National Protocol on IP and Heritage Guardianship, plus advice on how to bridge the educational gap of copyright law within our community.
