 The rooms that you're in How's that? Excellent. Thank you. Okay, so we're going live In like 10 seconds, I believe. Yes, we're live Afternoon, we'll just admit everybody else. Hi, everybody. See if you're loving it Who's that lovely girl who just stepped in? Great. Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening everybody that is tuned in to our conversation Welcome to everybody on the content and from abroad who and everybody who's on our zoom as well Thank you so much for being here for the first of two KITF events My name is Kirshen Pagani. I'm the associate artistic director of the Tevere Arts Foundation I'm very very excited to be introducing the first event that we have today Which is a conversation with two of our partners the Nambi musical theater initiative and the pan-African creatives exchange For those that are still coming in into our zoom room our kind request for you to please turn off your videos and Also mute your audio just so that we can have the most seamless Live streaming experience and for everybody else. Thank you for Tuning on from Facebook and all of our other live streaming platforms Without further ado, I will pass it on to our moderator Rosette today who will lead us through our conversation But before I can Officially do that. I just wanted to mention that We are having another event tomorrow where we will be looking at Editions, of course because of corona we could not convene in person this year, unfortunately But we're hoping that all those that are tuned in will be able to relish the nostalgia of our six in-person convenings We've had ever since 2014 with a special Documentary that we have compiled with all of the productions and works in progress and events and activities that we have had at the festival in the past that will be Released live on our YouTube channel at 2 p.m. Tomorrow So if you're able to log in and watch it at your own time, that would be wonderful and of course You are also welcome to attend our cocktail hour tomorrow to network with producers artists that were present in previous years and just to get more about KITF as a platform and That again as I said that video will be available for you to watch from 2 p.m. Tomorrow So thank you so much to all of our funders and our donors and to all of our partners including the Pan-African creative exchange and the Nairobi musical theater initiative Both of whom will be in conversation with us today over to you Rosette Hello everybody. Welcome to this conversation That is a part of Campala Theater Festival as Karishma has mentioned This is one of our online activities and it's our first online activity that we're creating We at KTIF Tiberi and Tiberi Arts Foundation are very excited to be partnering with the Nairobi musical theater initiative in Campala in Kenya and the Pan-African creative exchange in South Africa to produce this specific event This afternoon morning or evening depending on where you are in this world We're going to be talking about creative and disruptive platforms across the African continents And who better than to speak about these topics than four amazing artists Arts managers and academicians who are doing incredible works in their arts on the continent Before I officially introduce our panelists, please allow me to introduce myself And also give you a brief history of the Campala International Theater Festival My name is Rosette Interfas. I'm a festival and arts manager who is based in Campala Uganda I work with the Tiberi Arts Foundation and I've worked with KTIF since it started in 2014 And I'm very honored to be moderating this conversation I will give you a brief history of the Campala Theater Festival This year's edition is the seventh edition and we have had six festivals once each Once every end of year in the month of November The festival started in 2014 and was born out of the works that Sandan Theater Program was doing in East Africa That work evolved into an initiative called the Sandan Institute, East Africa That work that the institute was doing The work that the institute was doing was to support six East African countries which include Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Randa, Uganda and Tanzania They supported them by giving them space to help them work on their projects without feeling any kind of pressure to produce their work The artists were able to produce work without any pressure and write, create work and the next phase led to being able to have a production There was never really any space in between that these artists could get support from their, away from their daily life from the hustle and bustle of their cities That they lived in and make time to work on their works with the support of actors, drama actors, directors and creative advisors So that was the gap that the Sandan Institute filled by inviting the artists from mainly Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania And eventually Randa to go to Utah for their theater summer labs to see whether the theater makers in the US could resonate with our artists in the region So when Sandan Institute was transiting into the Middle East, the questions that were on the table were how would we be able to maintain the kind of work that Sandan is doing And how would we be, how would we ensure that this work is actually sustained by East Africans themselves So this is how Bayimba came on board because of the kind of festivals they were running and producing So Bayimba, Teria and Sandan Institute partnered to produce a festival that was specifically a home for Ugandan theaters as well as East African theaters And was a platform and is still a platform for works to be seen so that is how the theater festival was born So what we've been doing over the years is focusing on East African works and African works, but also inviting works elsewhere so that our theater practitioners and makers can interact with their contemporaries from elsewhere And our audience can get exposed to the different ways of making theater We've had performances from different parts of the world, but always making sure that African works are highly represented at our festivals Over the years what has become apparent to us is to keep spaces for these African works from different parts of the region, so that it's not only limited to East Africa, but we have a representation from Southern African, West African, North Africa Though we have not yet had a representation from North Africa, but we have invited them, it's just because they have not been able to make it to our festival It's our hope and ambition to make this a very significant festival and platform for the continent as far as theater is concerned The two things that we're thinking deeply about right now is how to involve corporate local sponsorship and make sure we cultivate an audience that is Ugandan On that note, I would like to introduce our panelists Before I introduce the panelists, I kindly request that everyone switches off their videos and mute their mics so that the discussion can go smoothly I will start by introducing Eric Wainaina I will give a brief introduction of the panelists and Karishma will share their full biography in the chat so you can be able to look at the chat room and see their full biographies I will start by introducing Eric Wainaina Eric Wainaina is a well-known musician, artist activist in Kenya, Africa and worldwide He is a graduate of Berkeley College of Music and is an artist director of the Rainmaker producer and production and the Nairobi Musical Theater Initiative Since he runs in concert with his wife, managing director Shiba Heist In 2004, Eric set a milestone on a Kenyan music scene where when he premiered a 21-song music theater place Wanda Mano Stone based on a local folk Story marrying the traditional instrument and styles of lower people of western Kenya with contemporary urban sound Eric Wainaina is an alumnus of the theater institute program East Africa Initiative Welcome Eric I will go over to Shiba Shiba is the co-owner and managing director of Rainmaker's production She is a long arts producer in Kenya and now serves as the director of Nairobi Film Festival She also directed and produced the Sawa Sawa Festival to celebrate Kenyan performing arts From 2005 to 2008 she was the director of Sarakathitras and dedicated to the study and performance of acrobat arts Welcome on board Shiba Next I will introduce Ewen Maz Ewen is a New York based theater maker, education and international arts advocate from the Netherlands She has worked extensively in Australia, Europe, South Africa, South Korea and US In New York she directs several productions of Broadway as well as site-specific She is a co-founder and director of Pan African Creative Exchange, artistic associate and director for the fellowship program for the international performing arts for the youth and the program director for Off-Broad Origin Theater Company She has been frequently invited as a director, facilitator, educator and speaker for international and cultural festivals and universities and congresses and think tanks For more of his biography we have shared it online Through the chat, welcome Ewen Last but not least I will introduce Nick Jonah Nick Jonah has various roles in the cultural sector She is currently a visiting research fellow at the Center School of Speech and Drama She is the lead for the pop culture and social exchange at Count Points Arts In 2008 she launched the Pan Africa Creative Exchange Pace a platform for artists based in Africa Welcome Nick on board Right now I will dive into the questions and I would, I'm going to read out the questions and I will direct the first questions to Eric and Sheba The questions are could, could you talk about the platform that you lead and maybe the other platforms that you are aware of on the continent that are transforming creative experiences and how they are doing it What is their impact and what has been the impact in COVID-19 era Eric do you want to start or shall I Go ahead and start Hi everyone and thank you so much for joining us on this morning or afternoon or evening as we have now learned to do our salutations in different time zones But it's great to be on this conversation with all of you who are here in this room and those of you following on Facebook as well As Rosetta said I am sitting in Nairobi Kenya where I currently in my capacity as like the managing director of the NBO musical theater initiative But I've, which I think is perhaps the place that I'd like to sort of start talking about the work that we do that we think is disruptive and interesting at least in this space I probably should have let Eric tell a little bit about the actual starting of the initiative of the musical theater initiative because he was right there at the inception of the project and I'll let him talk about that part But what we have going on right now is an initiative that basically has collaborative teams of composers and writers who have come together for the last four years to create new musical works that are based on East African and Kenyan stories predominantly and the objective of this was to create a new body of work that could be enjoyed by audiences in Kenya who had demonstrated a real and committed appetite for music theater But we were feeling that we were constantly living in material that had been initiated and written in other contexts and other countries and we're constantly working in an adaptation sort of framework And it seemed interesting to to to ground the storytelling from Kenya and from our lived experiences and from our traditional stories melded with our contemporary experiences as well and develop works that could form an interesting body of work not just for our audiences here at home but also for audiences outside of Kenya and East Africa and the program has been running for, as I said four years now and we've got 14 productions that are in development at different And it has had an interesting effect because I think we landed on a kind of unusual model in terms of in terms of writing programs because most of the writers who are coming into our program and most of the composers, neither one nor the other had ever considered themselves writers of musical theater work per se. In fact, the whole category strikes a lot of people as being a perhaps uniquely West End New York type of thing and that doesn't have a very deep rooting in our part of the world. I think that some of the incredible discoveries though that have been found by taking the risk to explore genres that are outside of your comfort zone and seek to see whether you can relocate some of like It take on the risk of trying to create this kind of material has allowed some really interesting challenges to even what the form of musical theater traditionally looks like in the rest of the world. And I'm very excited to be part of this particular effort that is perhaps providing an Africa rooted response to what the genre could look like from our point of view and redefining those parameters somewhat and giving them a more a more a broader read basically one that allows our methods of storytelling and our methods of incorporation of music into our storytelling into into this genre. It seems very much in keeping with the re centering of creative work that's going on across the world and notably led by the black lives movement. Initiative movement in America. I mean, I think we're also going through a process in East Africa where we're really beginning to. Well, continuing continuing to I think we've always been in a in a strong resistance activism space about creating work that speaks to the truth but being able to do it also through the creation process and through the content of the work that we're creating. So that's what we're doing here with the nbo musical theater festival. As far as like other bodies that work around the continent, I suppose, I think one of the most useful things about this particular initiative and this particular collective for me comes from the point of view of the fact that I hadn't really considered working as a as a creative in Canada hadn't really considered that there could be a very strong context for the work that we were putting together here in in other African countries and in other African markets, partly because there was so many barriers as we all know and it's kind of like, you know, preach it to the choir telling a story that we already know that it is it is it is profile it is difficult to imagine knowing all the challenges that there are into production in this context and and imagining those same challenges to production to exist in a real way in Tanzania and Uganda and maybe in Lagos and the challenges of like wanting that work to travel the desire of wanting that work to travel is often met by a resistance of kind of maybe I don't want to put an anxiety about the difficulties and the barriers they are to that work being able. So I think we limit ourselves in like actually seeking those opportunities and looking for those pathways and get sort of attached to what seemed like more straightforward pathways, you know, going northwards and north, north westwards, where there are more established markets with and much more easier paths to market. And I think one of the most interesting things about taking play participating as I did in the, in the pace process which you will hear about, I shortly from Nick and Erwin was really the opening up to the realization of how many organizations with a very similar ethos to our organization exist and with and connecting with this other organizations that could have great synergies with ours. I also experienced a traveling to the compiler festival. An initial I mean compilers right next door to us literally is a bus ride away, but it really took a deliberate invitation from Debra Seem where to say hey why don't you bring these works in progress to our platform for us to really begin to put our minds around like what is it what would it take to produce in that context and having traveled there and actually witness the wonderful compiler data festival in progress. It's now an anchoring point along my path for where I want to see where work can begin to have a journey outside of Kenya for me and for like you know in the East African context very exciting. Like I, I have to say for me this is a very big season of learning and connecting with other platforms and it's the, it is this covert season that has actually amplified the, the, the, the accessibility the potential accessibility of these other platforms, but also awakened more intentional desire to connect with those platforms. And yeah, maybe I'll stop there for now. And then going directly from that I think that definitely this period. Thanks for referencing it. COVID has done many things to the planet but one of the things it has done is I think it has brought us together in such interesting ways, connecting in ways that we had not previously thought were possible. I mean, so do you do you do you see that successful for the work that you're doing necessarily involves playing on a stage in New York, and I was dumbfounded when they asked, because well, I think up until that point maybe I had kind of thought, yeah, you know things do kind of need to end up there. But the sort of the interest of which they asked it was look. I mean, what about the rest of the continent what are you doing about that, you know. And for me, the works that we are creating in the musical creative initiative are telling such homegrown and such heartfelt stories drawn from this particular context, that if I was asked right now where where do I finally want to see those plays yes I would love to see it on Broadway but I'd love to see it playing in near May or love to see it playing somewhere in Banjul you know it would be it would be great. One of the things that we're doing right now and one of our participants always talks about it is that in this process, we are discovering or have discovered our tribe as it were. The people who we need not explain to what it is that we do and we just get together in this space and and and and and write these works together. All the participants here are people who are who are professionals in their own right doing their own thing. But like she said, they've never necessarily sat down to write a musical but they bring in their particular strengths. Whether we're talking about a sit down and I'm only who has been writing poetry and writing straight place forever, or if you talk about, we have a group called too early for birds who are taking who are putting the untold. We're talking histories on stage so when you hear that. A story about a political assassination yes, but what is the maybe what if we if we had the story from the standpoint of the of the wife of the assassin, for instance, you know, sort of stories that are as it were adjacent to the main story that we haven't yet had During this period, what we've been doing while we it had been our plan to get everyone together for a residential workshop because of COVID that not being possible. What has ended up happening is that we've had every work. Eight of the of the 14 work so far, come and spend a week here with us with and we literally the first thing because the hardest part has been how do people commit what they've written so far into some kind of permanent form. And so we've kind of been saying to everyone the minute you walk in, then the metronome in the studio starts going off so so isn't like literally we're recording right. And so what that has meant for people is that it has forced people to say okay fine okay fine right. I don't know where this is going, but let me put this down now. And there's been significant progress in the works that we've been that have been in development here just sort of forcing people to or compelling people to make to make that that step of permanence as it well. Yeah, I think I've said what I'm going to say for now. Over to you, Rosette. Thank you, Eric and Shiva for sharing your experience and telling us what is happening in Nairobi. I will pass it over to Nick and a win to tell us about pace and other platforms and what is happening on their side. Thank you everybody and thank you, Prisma, Shiva and all in Kripala and the rest of the world for inviting us to be part of this platform and also sharing your time with those over the last, I think it was just every month we've been talking to them so it's been thrilling for me because I don't have a strong connection in Kenya but what I do have a strong connection in South Africa and in West Africa. So I'll talk to you a little bit about the Pan-African Graduate Exchange and as Rosette said earlier it was set up in 2018 and it really came off the back of the fact that a lot of activity that happens around the world in terms of collaborating on a world scale tends to happen outside of the continent and for a long time a lot of, I used to run a very similar showcase platform in England as part of the Arts Council England initiative, which is what African, Asian and Caribbean artists and so lots of delegates and practitioners, arts professionals from across the continent would say when you're going to come home but my intention was always to do something in West Africa, it's my second home, but actually South Africa was perfect for all sorts of reasons. So we partnered with the Fleissat Festival, the International Festival, it's in Afrikaans, the Nakina Festival, that was really wanting to diversify what is seen as an Afrikaans festival, and they wanted it to represent the Afrikaans speaker of South Africa, which is around, I think, the 100% people of color. So we set up this platform really to do a couple of things, one, we wanted to be sure that we weren't replicating models from the West or Europe or North America or Australia that didn't quite work for marginalized groups or Africans and taking into consideration the context in which many people in Africa operate in. When I say that, I mean that funding infrastructures aren't there, I mean that also being set infrastructure, I mean I think in Nigeria we've only got a handful of Fleissat's short country over 170 million, and we don't have to say, I mean I think South Africa is quite, is quite a strong and quite a windy bit about it, theater infrastructure, there's always room for growth, but they have quite strong theater infrastructure when we look across the country. So we put on this showcase and we invite people from within our network, so Erwin is based in New York, he has a huge network of North American presenters, programmers, people who are interested in investing in artists and arts organizations that are based on the continent. Also because he's got to have very strong connections in work and in the Netherlands, I have quite a strong connection across Europe, US, Canada, West African, and Ricardo is connected in Australia, Asia, and of course South Africa. We've combined our networks, and we encourage people who can buy or invest in some kind of way to come to place. What is place? It's really a place where artists can meet other artists from across the continent and the wider that that's for all artists who are also interested in responding to contemporary Africa so you get artists from Spain and Australian. The majority of the focus for place, it's for artists on the continent. And so they get to show work that is what we call tour ready, that is work that's ready to go that can be picked up by a festival, or by a venue, or can start a tour. And that is really for artists who are really 100% ready to go. The second category, which is a lot more of what we think a lot of the work fits in, is what we call tour and work in progress. And that is work that's gone through some kind of research and development phase, some kind of rehearsals, but still need some kind of support, they might need funding support, or they might need creative support, they might need other artists or artistic directors to help steer them a little bit so that they can shape it, to represent what they can travel beyond their local space. When we talk about travel, we don't mean outside of the continent, we mean within the continent, within your own country, and the rest of the world. And then we've got preaching, the people who might have the big idea or that can't really sit with a showcase platform because of physical feasibility. And that allows them to share their work, their early ideas, and that does quite well. We split pitching into two spaces, we have it set up as speed dating, which is a bit more of an intimate experience where you can just go around and meet people. And as you meet people, and five or six people in a session, groups of people, you sharpen your pitch. And we did the speed dating this year, and we did the pace on completely online, and it went down incredibly well, and we're still getting a really positive feedback, but the speed dating did actually quite well online. We also, within our platform, we also have a producers lab, which is running right now until I think February next year, and we also do a geometry as you have. So we have a number of components because we recognize that, as with any artist, there's always, you always have to have a space to develop and shape and sharpen your work. You're thinking, you'll be able to feed into what your peers are doing. We also are very, very strong with dialogue. We really try to develop a dialogue and in a lot of what I find is on the continent, there's a lot of discourse around non text based and work. There's a lot of it's rooted within the playwright or the writers in Auckland. So actually we need to start developing that and helping people find their sort of journey in that space. I'll leave it for now because I'm sure Owen has a few more words to add. Yeah, no, I'll keep it brief because you explained the majority of it. So hi everybody. It's really lovely to be with you all from New York. That's why the lights are still on here. It's relatively early, so it's just getting a little bit lighter. But yes, Nika is correct. I think the biggest difference what people want to understand is that the Pan-African Creative Exchange, the word kind of says it, it's an exchange. So it's not a festival in the term of how people use festival terms. It's really a platform for people to come to connect and for producers, presenters to see work that they normally don't get to see and then decide if they want to collaborate with that or want to buy it to present in their own countries. So that's, I think, is the biggest term for the showcase, what we're saying. We're really showcasing. And this started by a coalition of the willing when we were coming together in South Africa in 2015, and the United Nations just came out with a report that said that of all the world's creative output, selling, collaboration, residencies, of all the world's output, 1% came from the African continent. And that's shocking, particularly knowing how huge Africa is and how much creativity there is. But we also all know the reasons why funding, visas, the difficulties. And so that was kind of the start of leading to this platform of how can we change that. And as Nikkei said, we do have these particular strands that people can write into. And how do you get to be part of that is that we actually have a selection committee that we are quite proud of that consists of quite a lot of festival directors on the continent, from North Africa, the middle of Africa, East, West and South, as well as a few, the majority is on the continent, but we also have a few presenters and producers from outside the continent to look at the work as well. Because some work would really represent very well in the continent, whereas other work represents better outside and vice versa, or both. And I think it is that kind of context that conversation that we're having in the four days, when we come together, it's a, it's a biannual event so it happens once every two years. And we come together for four days with people from all over the world and the conversations that are being had at that point is very much talking also about the context of the work. What does it mean if you are presented, your work is presented in Europe or in China or in Australia. How do you want the people there the communities there to talk about your work or to see your work. And I think that's what a lot of people never really think about as artists I'm a theater maker myself, and we tend to always focus on the work itself. But then when we want to tour with it or when we want to present it elsewhere. How do we want that work to be presented. And I think that's something that we talk a lot about as well at pace. One of the things I don't come from the continent myself. And one of the things that I'm always really quite struck by is how in many ways artists on the continent are at the forefront of of things that are happening. So even sometimes it's by necessity, but artists on the continent always wear multiple heads, probably because they need to. But here in America, for example, that's kind of like a new news and not anymore that new but for the last 20 years that people are saying like I'm this I'm that I'm that it is multidisciplinary. That's something that I've been seeing in work on the continent for a long time. It's highly contemporary and I think that's particularly something outside the continent that that that is not as known. People outside the continent are still looking at a certain way to Africa and the work coming from Africa and that's what they want to represent and this is something that pace is very much trying to go against it's very much trying to show the contemporary work. That's being created in the continent. That's, that's really exciting. And that needs to be seen elsewhere. So I'll leave it at that for now. Rosetta, because I know that you have some more questions, but that's, that's kind of what pays is really representing. Thank you, when I'll go to the second question and I'll pick from what you and Nick have mentioned. How effective is the way technology has played a role and how can we create and consume arts across the continent. And how can we utilize technology bearing in mind that in Africa we have poor infrastructure and in some cases most cases high costs that are involved. I was privileged to be part of pace this year and I'm, I think the audience would be curious to know from Nick and Ewen, why you chose to shift your, the exchange from physical to online, and also your choice of using the online platforms to showcase the works and any advice in terms of technology that you'd give someone who is hosting an event or what to look out for. So I'll direct those questions to Eric, I mean to Nick and Ewen. Yeah, I can, I can start with it. I think, obviously the reason why we went to is very simple is why everybody is going online at the moment. It's because of the pandemic we were forced to go online. Our event was supposed to happen in June in South Africa, as Nikkei explained we're connected to the Free State Arts Festival, which usually happens in June. And so that was the idea that we would be there. But then obviously we weren't able to nobody could travel. So we were able in a very short amount of time to switch it to an online platform. The great plus with that has been that it created huge accessibility. We, we had a lot of more people joining us because they simply didn't have to fly to places. And so that was really a big plus. Negative as you say, Rosette is that, of course, not everybody has great connection always. And then into some issues there using another platform besides zoom called air meet, which is great it's a great platform to to network with each other because you have much more freedom. Who do you speak to in zoom your kind of stuck to the program that everybody else is in. But that platform is relatively new and they were for example not able to have users from mobile devices. And that's of course a big no no, if you do, if you do something like what we were doing because a lot of people on the continent use Internet of Internet access through mobile devices. So that was a big lesson learned for us. But fortunately we were able to have all these sessions also on zoom so that was a possibility for that as well. I think the majority, or the biggest plus again is this accessibility. I feel that so many artists on the continent felt that it was an event that really put Africa front and center, and that made people connect with each other that you know you might indeed be as she was said before you might be next door neighbors, somehow, even though you're close to each other you might not necessarily collaborate and then you come to an event like this. And then all of a sudden you meet people that might just be next door to you and you decide to collaborate so that often happens if you kind of go outside of your own. You meet people from the realm if you will, you meet people and you meet people from far away but also people from very close and then you start to collaborate and you start these conversations that were happening which was really exciting. Besides that I would say is we're now so focused in the digital realm on zoom or on camera on on on like these camera works, but let's not forget all the exciting things that are happening on what's up or via phones. You know, like Instagram or there's so many other things happening that doesn't necessarily require a camera or, you know, like this live digital conference platforms that we saw at pace as well so there's a lot of exciting work happening in the digital realm. And just to add to what Owen said is Ricardo Pichu is our other co-founder. He actually comes from a digital and experimental art background in Australia, so this was perfect for him because he could play a lot he was really adventurous. And, and so we actually do the call for telematic arts and artists working in partnership with faculty and ask electronic and other platforms around the world to give artists the chance to create work that is live and participatory in the digital space or over telephone or digital space. So this is really quite interesting work that's coming out people thinking about their own practice very differently. I think also what was great about me is they set up their platform to support the global south because they're based in India they said look we know that certain countries, people's internet service needs a particular kind of bandwidth to work on some of these platforms so you can work on a lower bandwidth and still get the quality experience on any because they've been signed in to support users and give access to the global south beyond zoom and other platforms. The other thing that we did is we supported people with data. We recognize that we really pay people and we recognize that a lot of artists were quite precarious they lost their jobs or no work was coming in they were stuck in doors. So how can we address that in the ways that our funds are allowed all our funds is really flexible and allows us to give people data so all the artists based on the continent that work with us were given a data allowance if you'd like to be able to pay for their data, maybe even use it for other things we just, and I think that was great. And the other thing we did is because we were really keen to have Francophone Africa in the room, we supported some of the artists who were French speakers with people who were supporting translation so they were translating I don't know how they were doing it if they were on a phone call but supporting artists who were not comfortable in English to be able to navigate navigate the online space and have a navigate the conversations and we're actually looking to do a little bit more of that and working with Korean the Koreans are really interested in partnering with us to have more access to artists on the continent. Yeah. Yeah, if I can also add on that because I think that might be a nice segue to Eric and Shiba as well is one of the things like what Nikkei was saying with regards to commissioning artists, I think the digital space was very interesting for that as well, because if we have to fly in artists and put them in hotels and stuff like that that of course is much higher costs now we were able to give artists small relatively small but still a fee purely for the work to create creative interventions or we had poets starting every day, doing a spoken word about disruption and disobedience. And so we even we collaborated with NBO MTI with two artists, Alea and Sitawa that did a fantastic creative intervention on one of the days of pace, and they were so successful that now other platforms that saw them at pace doing that, we're now asking them to come into their digital online festival or online platform to do a similar event. And this is exactly what pace is about. It is really about like showcasing these artists and up and then hopefully giving these opportunities for them to link to other platforms and, and I think, yeah, that's that's what been so exciting, also in our collaboration with NBO MTI is that both Eric was presenting his own work at pace, Shiba was part of the producers lab, and, and like I said, we also were working with some of the artists for the creative intervention so that was really a nice collaboration between these two platforms and we did similar things with the Lagos Fringe and other platforms on the continent. Thank you, Nick and Ewen. A lot of people have been complaining and saying that technology and online digital spaces are creating so much divide, and some people see it as a disadvantage. For some people, it has created so many opportunities for you to be able to go across countries in your living room and to speak to people from different continents to learn from them. Shiba and Eric, could you give us experience, your experience with technology, especially with musical initiatives that you are involved in, how have you been able to utilize technology, and what advice would you give to someone who is, who is struggling to use it. That goes to Shiba and Eric. Okay, I guess I'll go first again. The, I think we were very challenged by, because by this whole incredible, practically an extinction event is what it feels like as somebody described it to me. And of course the, the urgency with which we were, well, the fact that we had to abandon all plans of having an in-person, we were supposed to be having really around this time of the year, our first in-person festival of new works, which we had to abandon the plans to do, which was very disappointing, but also presented a huge challenge to our writers and composers, because how were we going to give them a context in which to be able to experience their work completed, and also to have a record goal to be a member we're working for the first time. We're working with people who are doing this for the very first time. I'm sorry, I'm actually going to have to shut the door because my dog just opened the door. I'm so very sorry. Yes, we have a very, very special dog, and has been visiting both rooms. And so maybe I'll take over from, I just, I'll just kind of jump in. Oh, Shiba, you're back? Okay. I'm so sorry. I'll just let you go. But anyway, we landed on the idea of the radical old idea of radio, because I think one of the things that we found has been so challenging about just flipping over to these sort of visually based platforms is that, you know, the camera is part of the storytelling in our film, and in a way that the eye is the storytelling interpreter for a theatre play. So as soon as you bring a camera into any situation of theatre, you're already making editorial choices for the audience member, and, you know, you need to be good at that. Or if you're not, you're going to be making like, you know, you're going to be editing the experience heavily. However, and also you also need to be able to consider like what what quality of production values are you going to be able to achieve. Just as we all know, like producing for television and film really puts things on a different scale. And I think one of the other things that we found challenging as we looked at people as we all were negotiating the crossing of our in person work into virtual and digital spaces. There really became a differentiation of like, really the entertainment value of certain experiences versus others, as much as we all accepted initially like, wow, this is a great rallying together, they begin, you know, we begin to discriminate between what kinds of content we're enjoying experiencing in this format and which kinds we are not. So what the audio format presented for us is that as studio owners ourselves, we pride ourselves of being able to produce world class audio quality that, you know, is, is, is, is, well, you know, we couldn't get any better than how we can make it. We still leave this incredible space for the imagination and for the individual audience member to continue to interpret the work and to buy by allowing them to have their own visual accompanying experience. And actually unlock that as something that, you know, looking now, you know, something that, yes, it's a kind of a throwback because radio theater for some reason disappeared from like the Kenyan radio scene with the when the FM stations came online it almost virtually disappeared and yet it was something that I've grown up with and I really enjoyed. And it hasn't really come in like you know the podcast culture is slowly on the rise but that comes with a different kind of language although it's virtually it's on demand talk radio, you know. And so we began to see the coming together of two worlds that we had previously not seen ourselves playing in and imagining our theater works for that space and that's been a very satisfying journey to have to be embarking on and has given a sort of new life to our presenter to our creators. Because it presents a whole other kind of challenges yes it allows them the opportunity to complete their storytelling from a musical and and story point of view to it has to be to a satisfactory level. But they also get to develop a kind of a new skill and a new opportunity and explore a new medium and have them this other completely new creative area of expression that that now presents all kinds of opportunities and stands for them as a pitching document. For whatever it is that they want to do next with this work that they've created whether they wanted to go into to become an animated series or suddenly you can imagine sort of much more radically. When you haven't already made all the creative decisions around around the piece so that's been really powerful for us. And we've also you know stepped up and gotten into podcasting things that you've always intended to do but you've kind of, you know now this this was the moment when you start to take advantage of all these existing technological platforms that you haven't necessarily committed yourself to re learning. But I think if I want to talk about the challenging side I think there's still a huge gap and we've experienced it also on the music industry side and on the theater side, which is really how do artists effectively monetize and how do they. You know, how do they, how do they ticket this and how do they monetize this and beyond just having pure sponsorships and putting this out live how do they build communities around this that really value and give you, you know, I mean ticketing is a really it's the final valuing of your work right if nobody wants to buy a ticket to your show maybe maybe you should, you know, think about how good that show is you know. It's a very important assessment tool about whether your society really wants the work that you're making or not and it's a valuable one to put yourself to the test to regularly, I think. And, but, but that is still a really complex problem to unpack for for most of us. Whether it's about free content sitting on platforms like YouTube and then being, you know, getting royalties from the back end of that, or whether it's, you know, we've seen people experimenting with tip jazz. What's up for business where you sign up to people's what's up for business and you receive the content on a membership basis. I've seen people doing stuff with page, Patreon, I don't know how to say that what is a patron or Patreon, and also becoming increasingly popular as ways of like, which those are subscription based services so you sign up and you get additional content. One that that people have been talking quite seriously about is a network platform called only fans which is popular with people who sell adult content they figured out how to monetize this content a long time ago. And maybe that there could be some, I mean, could there be some learning about how you put some pay gates in front of some of your work and still allow other work to be to be accessed at no cost. Of course data always remains a limiting factor, maybe a little bit less so in Kenya because we seem to have good relatively better data packages and the rest of the many other places. Yeah, it does continue to be one of the challenges to the magical story of, you know, putting this content online. I'm just going to say the film as good as it gets Jack Nicholson walks into this. This this this ward where he's going for going in for counseling and he looks at the rest of the patients and he says, folks what if this is as good as it gets and so everyone's been talking about the new normal but we've there's always been a thing okay maybe maybe it's a vaccine maybe it's going to work maybe it's not, but I think that a we are in a place right now where we should stop. And I think a lot of us are doing this we're not seeing ourselves as victims of the current situation anymore. Right I'm, but we're there like what can we do to embrace this thing and and and and power through it. I think even technology the way people are making even videos now or whatever is in like, even on social media, who become so much more accepting of things that 10 years ago they've been they're like come on that's a multi camera job for sure you know, but now I just like oh your camera in the face that works. And I think we are, we are, we are embracing we are using technology as it is right now and forcing it to work with us in this in this new this new world order that we find ourselves in. And so, I think that for us, it's as I created myself who's never had to to think of these kinds of forms of output before these platforms as necessarily where things will be, maybe the main maybe the principal platform in which they're, they're consumed to begin to to to consider that and yeah it's it's it's it's time for lemonade. We are surrounded by lemons. Yeah, Eric that's a great point you're making because I really see that happening on a lot of international platforms now to is the the change of aesthetics, like what used to be called what was what is good, you know like who decides what good is and I think it's a really nice point that we're making with regards to the aesthetics of theater or of it's changing now because of the media that we're using, and what used to be called now that's too amateurish or something like that is now considered all of a sudden totally cool. And I think that's a really good thing that we are switching what is good and what is not good and there is no not good everything is good you know like that kind of thing is really interesting to to have that conversation. And another thing is, we, I mean, when I say we I mean, I kind of gets that I'm no longer part of the younger generation. We might have been used more to looking at things live. So we might have a certain sense of like, oh, but the online and that's not but our children. This is what they're used to. They are used to to consume theater and arts and maybe not necessarily live theater obviously but to they are used to the arts in a different way than we when we grew up. And so I think it's very important to think about that too is it's not indeed what Eric is saying it's not about because we now have to. It's also, it's the pandemic has accelerated something that in a way already was happening let's face it the performing arts were in crisis in in many parts of the world before things needed to change. And particularly young theater makers were already pushing we're already going in different directions and I think in a way it's super exciting that the pandemic now has kind of accelerated that so I just want to. Yeah, I just wanted to say Eric is making a really interesting point that I feel is is really good to take into consideration. Thank you for picking from Erin and Eric technologies and open opportunity for us to tap into the young audiences and to start building the young audiences that we've been neglecting. It's also an opportunity for us to open our wardrobes and get the old things that we have been reflecting. Going to the third question, which is part of it has already been answered in the conversations that we've been having, which is about the different platforms across collaborating across the continent what what has been your, your experience do you think it's of value, and how can it be effective bearing in mind the language divide that exists across the regions of this continent. And in this era where we're looking at opportunities of scaling up how can we maximize that opportunity to collaborate with other people. Any other questions to me can add a way to start with that. The question I'll try to answer it in parts I think, I think what's really been nice is that people are taking risks, things that they wouldn't have done because of the static some of the points that Eric made and I would made earlier. People are saying let's just give it again, and we see how we go. And they tend to ask the audiences and the participants for generosity. They look, someone might fall off the internet or something might go wrong, which is kind of stick with us. And what you're seeing is you're seeing a lot more interesting cross sector calibrations you're seeing a lot of people from outside of the art sector coming into the arts because they need a new way of working or new way of making and reducing their events, because the default to some of these corporate companies and the bigger institutions is to try and replicate what we've always done or do it online. And they realize that those, those events activities don't tend to be successful because we are online and it's different. It's not even that we're online. It's what online in the context of almost in, in, well, for many of us, we in England, a forced lockdown, we're locked down until I think next week. And, and there's so many restrictions as to what you can and can't do who you can and can't see. And I think one of the areas that is really picking up speed in England is the gaming areas is the gaming platforms, and we've seen that a little bit sort of within platforms like any where they have this sort of sort of interactivity in these immersive fields to it, but also AR and VR, you know, augmented reality and reality in virtual reality are beginning to play a really interesting role with data makers. And it was always something that was, I mean, even England that was a little slow, but you can see people are really running with it and exploring it a lot more. And I think we shouldn't ignore what the gaming space has been doing. I mean, if you think about gaming, it's storytelling, it's visual arts, it's music, it's drama, it's all of these things that we are doing. But in within this virtual space that has been cutting across boundaries. And I think lots of, even with the COVID communications, they've been working with the gaming platforms here in England. And there's one big organization over here that has been working with the comms and fake news that we've been guessing around COVID and in building some of that into the gaming and thinking about how gaming can help communicate these key messages that have been getting out in the sea of fake news. So I think it's a really exciting time. And I think what also I've seen is a lot of international platforms are reaching out beyond their usual network and saying, come and engage with us, it's free to participate. Some of the big platforms like Isper and the Performing Arts, the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, they're allowing people to come into their platform for free. And normally you would have to pay quite a large fee. And it's just another way for people to start to connect and see what's going on in this space that they wouldn't have normally had access to. So this is my thoughts around this. I'm answering as many of the points as I can remember. Erwin, do you want to add anything else? No, just very briefly. I like actually that you're not only talking about platforms, you know, in the way like we are, for example, collaborating with MBO MTI, but that we're also looking at different interdisciplinary platforms, how we are indeed now working with the gaming industry. And I do think, I think particularly what we're missing in live performing arts is not so much what was on the stage, because what was on the stage we can still see or hear or, you know, online. It is more that the art of gathering, this bringing together, this being together as people. I think that is something that we're trying to figure out how can we do that in a virtual sense. And I mean, I was really struck by when the pandemic was really bad here in New York in the spring, when there were more than a thousand people dying every day, we were not allowed to have funerals. And so people were starting to have funerals in like the gaming in like in Fortnite, like because that was a space where they could gather as avatars, but still had the feeling that they were somehow together or connected. It was really quite remarkable. And the other thing that I would say is, you know, in all ancient narratives, pandemics were never the end of the story. They were always the start of the story. And so I feel like, in a way, yeah, it's, we should look at it as a portal to, you know, what is, what is, what can, what new world can we create out of this. There's so much that is being changing and that's so much that's being destroyed in a way, but that also allows for new things to happen. And I think that's very exciting. And, and some of these exchanges that are happening and one of them, one of the examples is our exchanges pays with NBO MTI. Similarly, with the Lagos French Festival in Lagos with decaf in in Morocco. So, so yeah, so there's a lot of exciting collaborations happening and maybe that's happening now more or faster because of the virtual space. Because now people might just think of it quicker, because before they might have to think, oh, we have to find funding to fly to, you know, and now we just say, it doesn't matter if I collaborate with somebody across the street or across the world. It's the same thing we have to meet on zoom anyway. So, yeah. I would like to collaborate. Eric and Fibba. Have you had experience of collaborating beyond the arts ecosystem outside the arts to facilitate the works that you're doing. And I would like you to give your experiences in how you've been able to produce your works in different parts of the regions, bearing in mind that there's a land language barrier, how have you been able to break down that language barrier in the different platforms that you are sharing your work. It's a producing question, Fibba, you better take it. Is it a producer question. Oh, I was like, I'm probably the last example of this collaboration outside our spaces and maybe instead of pointing you to specific examples. I mean, in a small and more immediate sense, I can say that, you know, our experience with the Kampala Festival was very, very useful in terms of beginning to unlock what it is to produce with another body in the region. We had a lot of collaboration about bringing our four works in progress to Kampala Festival and that needed to be a very close and very easy to basically get the courage to decide to do that and it was profoundly affecting I said, as I said for all of us, in terms of making that space between our countries much, much shorter. So I would say the first step is to just try it first. Just give it a go. I mean, we tried and tested parts along which we can, we can already speak to other people's experiences and sometimes you may be the very first person attempting to do that particular version of thing or, or, or, or at least if there were others before you, they haven't left enough breadcrumbs or stones on the path for you to follow. So there is also a real importance for us as we do these collaborations to also document what we're doing as we go along. But out of that participation in pace, we were immediately able to start to work with directors, directors from the region. For instance, we started to work with Arthur on one of to come in and be a consultant on one of the projects that is a multilingual piece that also needed a certain a certain dramaturgy that comes from this region in order to ensure that it's like really being true to the story that is trying to tell both in its storytelling and its music. And sometimes, you know, just being able to have a bigger resource pool of professionals to, to draw from, you're able to get like, you know, some, some expertise that you maybe weren't aware of maybe wasn't available in your immediate local environment but once you expand the parameters a bit you already have access to other people. I think for me what I most find challenging about this question is, well, I'm interrogating myself as a producer who's, I would say, you know, reasonably successfully produced in this country. Why have there been such substantial barriers to creating the pathways to producing the work or traveling the work around the region and the continent and I notably was comparing it to, you know, in my growing up years the National Theatre was regularly visited by productions from Uganda from Tanzania from and there was a real intention I mean there was a very well here we go it was a very pan African season right and it began to strike me that there being no normal like very clear established like commercial parts or like commercial like precedents that say do this it's going to be it's going to work out. And so all these ventures sometimes somehow being high risk events. There has to be something else that drives it and perhaps that thing has to be ideological, it has to be something else beyond just like, will I be able to, you know, show my work to that audience and be usefully compensated for that. It is a high risk thing to ask yourself if you take your work to near me as Eric was saying, whether you're going to find the right audience you're going to find the right partners are your people going to be saying are you going to be less stranded at the hotel with no without the guy having paid the, you know, who was supposed to be also having there's a vulnerability and a risk that comes with that work that can only be overridden by a decision that like is is that transcends what the risks that are presented. And for me and for me that is about making a dramatic and market ideological shift to say that this is something we collectively desire, we have to decide continentally that we collectively desire to see works from the rest of the continent it's not going to do it to itself in the short term if we want to see it in the shorter term, a different set of intentions has to be set. I think also just just briefly in creating work that has that will that cuts across sort of language barriers very often. I don't know whether that's the, this is the experience everywhere but I know in Kenya, for instance, when you were, you'll find that as tends to happen. An actor or communicator will be much more adapted communicating in one language than than he or she is in another right. And so I think that going forward. You know, for example, I can, I can deliver a lecture in English right, but try and get me to the same thing and so I think that's not going to happen with the same degree of fluency and same degree of comfort. And it's also see with actors on stage you know give them a line to speak, and it might come out quite stilted unless they get to speak it in the way and the form of the language in which they are used, you know. So, going forward even sort of cultural barriers where language is concerned I know for a while it had been oh subtitles super titles are never going to work on theater or they work so badly or whatever. But it's like we've been hopping on about on and on in this conversation. It's new parameters new rules right. And so, whether it's that everyone is getting this the script as a PDF on their phone and they're reading it in the audience and sort of following along you know it's the whole, whatever you know. But, and maybe even actors delivering lines in different languages I mean, it's always a shock to me to show up in Johannesburg and people are speaking. I mean one of 11 languages to each other in the streets was like, I didn't know you speak because I know I don't think was I speak Zulu but that they understood me because we have this relationship you know we understand each other. Wow. This is like it's, it's what the world needs let's just. Yeah, this we just have to let each other's languages. And also, yeah, put all that stuff on stage and. If we ever do get back on stage, but I mean directorially even a deck is going to know how to, to get a character to say a line in a way that we understand what's being said we just saw this wonderful production in, in, in Kampala. KITF, where this this the woman from the Middle East. Oh, for was she from North Africa. Yeah, remind me. What about the woman about the play about. Exactly, you know. And, whoa, that was, we got into that all the way, you know, to a subtitle you know and just, just in this having her say, go through her lines and everything just in Arabic and us hearing this wonderful languages flow over us in the audience were just completely bathed in this thing you know and yeah fine for reading the subtitles but was a completely massive experience. So languages languages not an issue. I said I'd be brief and I completely like but I'm done. I just love what South Africans today. You can watch TV. I kind of got to know a little bit through the soap operas where they were just everyone was going in and out at least two or three languages and they just subtitle so you get used to doing that. But everyone did a great piece a couple of years ago where he was working in. And English. I mean the last piece that we did was cause a Zulu Africans English and Mandarin, because actually there's a huge Chinese Taiwanese Chinese population in blue fountain so I couldn't I couldn't agree more Eric I think. Already hearing a different language already puts you in a different perspective as an audience member. I mean I come from a country for in Holland it's obligatory to speak four languages because you know nobody speaks Dutch we're so tiny. So we are surrounded by all these bigger nations around us so we have to learn their languages. But, but I think there is something to it to hear other languages is incredibly powerful. And that's what I like indeed in South Africa to I when Ricardo asked me to make work there. You do to the history of South Africa that you still see in the theater world. It's still quite segregated the English language theater versus the Africans language theater versus, you know, the, the African languages theater separate it's quite separated, and that was really as a theater maker I said I do not want to make any work here that would follow that silo. So I said I only if you want me to make work here it's going to be multilingual because this country is multilingual so we need to represent that on stage. I'm always a big proponent of representation on stage of the society that you make your work in. Yeah, multi language, I'm all for it and indeed translations. It's so funny that in the most in the, in the kind of like most posh and oldest the theater medium opera. It's so normal to have subtitles that everybody finds it normal to have subtitles in the opera. And it's the most posh most oldest, you know, like medium in theater so why are we not doing it in the most contemporary theater. We can totally use it. We're going to go to the second last question, which is most creative platforms on the continent get their funding elsewhere, mainly from Europe and North America. Some of the funding comes with an agenda attached to it. Is it really possible for African creative platforms to fully be disruptive as desired to manage their activities as desired and to be innovative in the way they do their work. There's a funder in the most cases dictates the agenda. How have you been able to create and innovate in your organizations, and how do you finance your activities. I will start with Eric and, and Shiva. I think I'll even jump in straight. In my experience, sometimes the funders have have had an agenda. Yes, yes, yes, but in Kenya, our main sensor has been the government, you know, it's, it's in no way are we going to say oh, we got we got this money from different or whatever No, it has been the Ken the Kenyan government stifling us at every possible opportunity, you know, you, you take a stand against the government and suddenly if you're invited to play a gig and the president's going to be there you're literally cancel, you know, on the day off, you know, it's, and so for me the problem has never been the agenda of the of the funder you know it's the, it's the despots on the tyrants and the, I'm going to save the expletives. Another conversation who are currently living on, you know, I mean in Uganda right now I mean. What's happening with the robots, you know, being being arrested. Why am I forgetting his name. I'm only remembering. Yeah, Bobby wine. It's, it's, it's, it's ridiculous that I mean, you know, when, when, when, if the artists are free, then, then the people are free, you know, and moments know that. It's been, it's been a battle in Kenya is and even right now we're fighting the censorship of, of some of the new music coming out of, of, of sort of, let me say, of the parts of the city that sort of you know it's like like in a city as it were, and the lyrics are lurid and it's just it's, it's, it's, it's very overtly sexual stuff right and the censorship board is like oh no they can do this they can do this they can do this but we're saying look let these 20 year old say what they want to say about about their lives because they are taking a particular stand about how they see this world and of course it comes with a certain degree of responsibility that freedom yes, but who are who, who are the censorship board to tell them what to say and what to write. When I mean, you're a pastor condemning them and but when a corrupt politician walks into your church, you let them sit in the front row, right. And so the kids are saying, we don't care what you have to say, you know, and so I think that we need an end, and this will, this will continue. We've talked about technology over and over again. I mean one point at many years ago and I was singing this song that an anti corruption song, and the government officials that had to stop me singing it. The song had already been playing on radio and so the audience had to sing along with it, even when they were trying to switch us off right and here we are right now. You can literally I can literally come up with a song the next five minutes and have it on WhatsApp have it on Instagram have it everywhere right and so there is ways of us disseminating our, our, our thoughts and feelings and our artwork that that that will bypass all the hurdles that have been put in front of us, be they of governmental making of us maybe even self centering, or, and unlikely so an agenda coming from, from, from a foreign donor. Well tell us how you really feel about our government Eric. Don't hold back, don't worry about us getting in trouble or anything. I guess that cancels us getting money from the Ministry of Culture this for the end of the year. Thanks. No, I, I absolutely I mean I really understand where the spirit of this question is coming from in a in a sort of different way. Thank you so much. I suppose what I'm understanding from the question is not so much the overt requirement that you do or don't speak to certain issues, if you're going to take this money but rather the skewing that takes place when there's resources that are available for certain kinds of work and not for others and for work that and typically I think I suppose what has happened in this in this space is that because we receive a lot of donor aid. Things that are aligned with the particular donor agenda items, it's water, it's AIDS, it's healthcare, it's, you know, important, worthy things democratization like what the new wave is of what the donor investment in that region as part of like the development aid, you know, relationship with the country what that looks like will start to, to flavor the taste of your place, possibly. Yes, it will, of course it will like the, the reason that they enter into those partnerships with creative people is because they recognize the transformative effects that like all of the arts have in in, you know, advancing a particular social change agenda. I think that the difficulty is that there isn't enough other funding that is like, you know, more independent less strings attached less tied to a particular communication point and I think that is a real dilemma is one of the reasons why we have to always keep advocating for more of the resources that are like a portion by the state to go into helping to producers and production companies to have some kind of a creative and some kind of an underpinning that also doesn't limit people's creativity but allows there to be openly produced work. But it is, for instance, the reason why I stepped away from working within the not for profit and donor funded sector, you know, maybe 10 years ago, and took a decision to work more intensely in the commercial sector because there is a freedom that comes from that from negotiating your, your relationship directly with your audience. You know, I mean, ticketing is the first form of crowdsourcing I'm like crowdsourcing that's just selling tickets you know, it's that it's and ticketing platforms that have come up in Kenya have allowed us to now, you know, put, you know, sell your tickets months in advance and be able to at least underwrite your early production costs to have good production projections about what you're going to be able to make on that production to invite sponsorship based on the size of what you think your audience is going to do and also be able to offer a stronger value proposition to other people that want to partner with you even those not for like, you know, not for profit agenda driven partners. I just feel like be having a really rigorous close attachment to your audience base, and the recognition of the value that they hold your work in this is critical to negotiating freedom away from having your work predetermined by the, the, your, by your funding source. A great initiative that's happening with one of the ticketing platforms in Kenya called my goodness why have I forgotten their name Eric not to also take a sasa but the other our MOOC which is a ticketing platform that came up a few years ago. They are now if you've been ticketing through their platform which I do exclusive which we have been doing exclusively on some of my projects for some years. They are now they've entered into a relationship with the banking facility that based on your track record this begins to count as credit to you that on a particular production they'll be willing to advance you a certain amount of of money that can go into your early production costs which is, it's quite a big thing in a country where you can't get credit for for creative productions whatsoever it's and it's using your ticketing track record as your credit report as it were. I, I, I think that we have to really look carefully at what about at building, especially for smaller arts organizations about building very secure, much more secure, not if you if more than half of your funding is entirely from donor agencies or from not for profit agency support you are in a vulnerable position things will change organizations across Kenya collapse when Ford Foundation decided to wrap up its arts funding program and switch to funding media. And tragically many arts organizations just couldn't couldn't sustain them couldn't weather that very rough transition. And so yeah that's I think a diversity of like your income sources is so so critical and spending a lot of energy and a lot of resource in building a subscriber base to your work. Of it just allows you to diversify that it allows you assure footing more security and makes it is makes it. Yeah, easy for you to be in charge of the output of your content of your content. Thank you Eric and Sheba to Nick and Erwin. How have you been able to finance your activities and yeah, how have you been able to finance your activities. Yeah, I think for pace. I mean it's what she was saying is it's been we've been lucky to really tap into various different funding sources, relatively small but they all kind of like take do a part of the programming. It's been my experience actually that interestingly the the funding sources or that we were in communication with on the continent seem to have more of an agenda than the ones outside of the continent that was our experience. Obviously we are not creating work. So we are not so much as pace. We're not developing the work ourselves. So there might not be so much this focus on censorship of specific work but we of course are focusing on trying to get artists from different areas to come. And then you obviously are faced with national funding sources that only fund their artists and that's kind of natural but it becomes a problem. If they are saying which artists we should invite or not and that is something that pace has always been very, very independent in we do not take any funding if it comes with that kind of agenda where we don't have the liberty to choose which artists are selected for the for the Pan-African creative exchange. So again we have a selection committee that is of about eight, seven people from different festivals and if then if we do get some people from Nigeria for example but the Nigerian government wants to say yeah but you can't take those artists then we don't take that funding because we will still decide to take those artists. So we are able to get some funding sources from elsewhere. I think indeed the tricky thing with arts period is that there seems to be good art sources for specific programming elements but when it comes to operational costs which everybody always has that's the problem where you can't find funding for is to actually pay you know for your phone lines or for the paper that you need to you know like those kind of costs seems to be tricky to find funding for but yeah we are really fortunate to have some funding sources that we're able to keep us up and to make sure that we can pay for the artists at least some small stipend. I think another thing is to be very aware of is to build relationships with your funders. A lot of people tend to apply for funders and then forget to invite them to the premiere or forget to invite them for the event but the relationship that you build with funders is incredibly important and these conversations to have with them. I remember for us like Nikkei said we were able to switch some of our funding sources that were supposed to be for tickets for flights and then when all of a sudden the pandemic hit and we went virtual we obviously didn't need flights and so they were about to retract their offer but then we came back to them and said hey it's a mobility fund why not look at mobility a digital mobility having artists access the digital space it's not a ticket it's not a flight ticket but it's a voucher for internet and so they actually really like that and this is something that we need to think about we are the creatives in the room many of the funders are not the creatives we are the creatives in the room so we need to come up with the solutions maybe we need to say it in a way that they think that they came up with it but if you are good at that then they really really go for it so be creative also in that sense you know and that's what I'm saying like build a relationship with your funders because it's really important to have those relationships I just wanted to say for the people that are on the zoom with us we actually posted some things in the chat of different funding sources and mobility sources or or not even necessarily funds but also just guides for more information so you can access that there and I also know that Karishma posted a Google doc with many more platforms on the continent that we as PACE have relationships with but also that we're looking to build as a document of platforms on the continent so for those that are with us on zoom you can access that there as well I have a what advice would you give someone who wants to move from non-profit to commercial where would they begin from what would you tell them what would you advise them to do well I mean you know I say it like it's an easy thing of course it's like you see now you've caught me out it's hard work girl it's hard work and to be totally I mean I you know to take actually I was just thinking that of course this is very contextual to what kind of work we're doing so to be fair to be clear say for instance with the NBO MTI which is a not-for-profit initiative that is cultivating creative people developing their work and doesn't have an immediate like commercial output so what are you that you have no real choices except to look for art funding from arts funding sources and from possible benefactors and from possible sponsors who see you as part of like their social responsibility work when I talk about making that transition into like you know if you're if you're doing stage plays for instance I think the biggest mistake that certainly for me the big transition moment between beginning to differentiating between my work being able to exist in a commercial environment in Kenya and to create a commercial environment around productions in Kenya came from visit we went to visit a theater in London and we were talking about taking Eric's play to the Edinburgh Edinburgh festival and this was the pleasant theater and we I sat down with the director of it then and he showed me how he does his budgets you know and it's so interesting that that could be such a transformative moment in somebody's life but you know he I remember him show we so Kenya up until that point have been doing three you do a weekend you know Friday Saturday Sunday maybe Thursday Friday Saturday and that's it so you'd have four four plays you know you show your play four times at most you do it eight times you know and you can see that there's no way there's going to be like any kind of a commercial proposition around that I don't know why we had to kind of fully realize that I think we just accepted that this is how we found it and this is therefore how you do it so being in the theater will always be something that you're doing on the side and you know in your nights and weekends and never something that's in your main main time of day. The big transformation was actually beginning to think of a players like something that you could run for months, and to accept that you are going to have sometimes when you have a lot like a huge number of ticket sales and somewhere towards the end and almost zero ticket sales somewhere towards the beginning. And beginning to work with the idea of long runs with an amortization of like what your expectation is so instead of having eight shows that you're like we must desperately all sell them out. We're talking about having 30 or 40 or 50 shows where you can do a minimum guarantee of 30% across the board and then you begin to it won't work for every play not every play will have that capacity but there's a lot of plays that will be able to do this and so I think I would say the first step is to begin to look at taking the production that you have and what the production costs are of that production and looking at how long it would take you at a fairly conservative ticketing rate to break even on that as your baseline for whether you can do this or not. What that baseline number is you make sure that you make the play that you can afford to make them, you know you don't go too far outside of this and be like, Oh, I'm going to do, you know, 30 iterations of this play and each of them is going to sell out they're not, they're just not going to do that. So you work on a less, you know, on an average that's far below the number and you look at what that potential income would be, and you make the play that you can afford for that, that budget. And you may be pleasantly surprised and sell 50% of your, your, your ticketing across the board. I mean you'll of course have to augment this with like sponsorships and, and other partnerships potentially to get to your targeted budget, but immediately you start to talk about running your production for a longer time you become a more interesting proposition to anybody whose partnership you are seeking, whether it's like vendors who are having space at your event to, you know, to, to do a dish who want vending space at your, at your, at your run or whether it's commercial vendors who are supporting your production because you're communicating for much longer, you're really changing the proposition of what's interesting to them you're moving from 800 people seeing your play on two weekends to potentially like you know 10,000 people, which certainly makes for a critical project that is more interesting for them as, as a, as a marketing body, or as a marketing department of, of a, of a commercial entity, I think it's a gradual process and I think you have to do small experiments and I think it's good to seek out mentorship from people who've done that path before and I'm really happy to look at anybody's, you know, your budgets or your plans and and say to you well this is how I would do it if I was doing it. Thank you very much to anyone who's looking to move from nonprofit to commercial. Sheba has offered services of consultation and advice, and thank you very much. I don't have all the answers. So, I have all the answers, but you can always help someone move into that direction. Your experience is worth so much for so many people who have never done it. Thank you very much for telling us that we have to be creative with our finances and find ways to speak to the funder or the people around us. As we're wrapping up because the time is fast spent, I will ask each of the platforms to tell us how we can follow your platforms and how we can learn more about the work you're doing and how people can reach you. So I will start with Eric and Sheba. Okay, can you hear me now. Yes, you're gonna take this. You are muted. Karishma has very, like very sweetly put all the actual information inside there that's nbomti.org is our website. Follow us on Instagram at NBO musical theater initiative on Instagram NBO MTI on Twitter, and that's our that's ours. I was about to read paces, but you can also reach us through. I think we can drop our contact. I can, I will drop my email address is sheba.hasd at gmail. And I think it really is an interesting season for collaborations that I just just a wrapping up thought which is that I think a lot of these collaborations are going to become have to be built around individual people and partnerships with each other and finding one ally, just one person you kind of think of this great scoping things but it's, I think, really, the work begins to move because a, you know, sheba connects with and we decide like hey what's a work that could work in Kenya and in Uganda and maybe we put together a joint cast and we begin to make work that we know will resonate in both of our contacts and then travel it to each other and begin to see what that process looks like. I definitely think this is the kind of work that will be will be realized by making with many mistakes along the way and yeah we've just got to dive in and get going. Okay, you want to, you want to go. So anyway, how people can connect with us and the website and pan African green exchange is. And put it in. Also, all the social media. And I'll put my email address in though I'm not the easiest person to get hold of because I'm always super busy so it's better to go to our info is the someone that manages that inbox and and we will be most probably looking to open our homes and for our platform, most probably mid next year. So maybe around September next year perhaps, we will make sure that we were very good and rose that get the information so they could disseminate it, because we need to have more information. We will get back and any other activity out to you. Thank you. Yeah, I think now there. I think the platform that or the document that charisma center has really all the details in there. And I'm, I was told that she's also going to disseminate it among all the people that that have that are with us. So you can find all our details there, and, and there's so many other platforms to I just want to reiterate what she was said, I think the, the, the main it starts with the collaboration between artists themselves. I don't wait for presenters or for producers or because then you can really wait for a long time. It's really about the collaboration between the artists that makes that makes stuff happen. And I think that's particularly with regards to international work which is really something that pays is standing for of course is the exchange of the work. We see that the biggest strength and power comes from the artist connecting with each other. Instead of artists connecting to a presenter or to a producer but it's actually the artists together that makes a lot happen. Let's take this opportunity to thank the panelists for this rich discussion. Our time has been fast spent, and I don't seem to see any questions are raising. I know as questions I haven't seen any questions in a chat and since someone was raising any questions. I want to thank you for this opportunity and for sharing the knowledge that you've shared with us. It's not I would like to hand over to charisma, who has asked me to close to take over. Thank you so much for that. Again, just reiterating how inspiring and wonderful this conversation was so really, really appreciate you spending time speaking with us. Thank you to a wonderful as a moderator rosette for leading us through this conversation. And to all of our viewers, both on our zoom platform and on Facebook and any other way that you may have been connected. Of course, feel free to reach out to us if you do have a follow up questions through our Facebook pages. We'll be happy to find a way to connect you to our panelists if there are specific questions but of course, if it's to do with KITF reach out to us on our social media by email and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. And we hope that we will be able to connect with you all tomorrow at 4pm East Africa time for the KITF cocktail and mingling sun. And of course the KITF through the years documentary will be released on our YouTube channel at exactly 2pm East Africa time for you to watch in advance of the cocktail hour or whenever convenient. So thank you all so much. I'll see you in the live stream now. Thanks folks.