 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in to our series that has been happening for the last couple of weeks stories women carry. My name is Gershman Bagani I am your official question asker of the series and it really is my privilege to be speaking to various women across the African continent and the diaspora starting next week or starting today actually about their creative experiences and their practices and their journeys just as a way of engaging folks in in terms of their thought leadership and and how they continue their practice across the continent. I realize I haven't ever really talked about the inspiration behind this series so I thought I would just plug in and say a short a short word about it. I came out of a need to archive a lot of our practices in different ways on the continent you know as a practicing producer director and scholar now emerging scholar. I realized that there's just not enough content for us to be picking from to understand how people are working in the African context. It's a contemporary world so I thought why don't we start the series and thanks to the how run theater commons and the Tiberias Foundation and the musical theater initiative. We've had the opportunity to renew this for second series and hopefully keep continuing as as we move forward. So that's my little spiel for today and I also thought I would share that we have been experiencing a lot of things here in Nairobi for the last few days and so in internet connection and data is a bit all over the place. So it might mean that I pop off the call in between. And but that doesn't mean the conversation will not continue but I thought I would let you know that that's part of the challenges and some of the complexities were navigating with data being so expensive and sometimes even having to pay tax on it in certain ways on the continent so thank you for your patience and for bearing with us and we're really really excited that we're still able to bring this content and these creatives to you in whatever way shape and form that we can. I'd also like to thank our wonderful ASL interpreter Zina who has been with us since the beginning of the series so thank you so much for being a part of our team and sharing this important conversation in a different language to some of our other folks who have tuned in so thank you. And without further ado I'm going to take this moment to introduce our panelists for today. Hi Nikke. Hi Krishwa I'd love you to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It's really really a privilege to be speaking with you. Hi Krishwa, thank you for inviting me and looking forward to seeing where this story goes. Oh I have so much to ask you already because you have just such an interesting personal story but also with the work that you're doing on the continent and whilst also not being on the continent I just had so many questions that I already have so we should dive in but before I do that I'll just share with our audiences. I think again COVID pandemic just has a way of bringing people together so we haven't really met in person ever before but feels like I've known you, I don't know since my past life with the number of phone calls we've been on together and panels and projects we've been collaborating on so I met Nikke through a partnership that we had with the Tabari Arts Foundation and the NBO MTI and the Pan-African Creative Exchange in South Africa which you will speak about more today where we were on the same panel and then we continued conversations about collaborating in other ways to make creative platforms on the continent more accessible to our audiences and to our performance so yeah really excited to be learning more about that kind of work from you today and sharing with our audiences. So why don't we start off well on a more personal note, why don't we start off just learning about you, how are you doing, where in the world are you and what's cracking? I'm in England and I'm happy to say it's not raining, it has been, most of last week was rain so we're always a little bit happier in England when the sun's out so the sun's out it's not warm but at least it's sunny. So I'm here in England in my little office just waiting for us to move things around and get the permission from the government to start moving around a lot more so yeah. That's great, reversed roles here, it's always sunny in there Ruby but we've taken the rain from you for a while. That's lovely, lovely. So, why don't we jump in and let actually even I don't know this so I would love to learn more. Tell us about how you sort of got into the act, tell us about what you do, I know what you do but tell us what you do now and what that journey looked like for you from. It's always hard I guess when I talk about what I do, it does change from day to day so those of you who might have seen me talk before it was always a slightly different story. There are a number of things I would say I describe myself as a creative mediator and somebody who also works across policy development and policy implementation with more of a focus on equality and diversity. So really for me it's about how you ensure that all people have access to the arts to participate in the arts to be part of the arts in whatever way shape or form so this is kind of like a bit of my what I describe as my hard work. I am a visiting research fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and actually with a mind on equality and diversity so talk just it's really given me the freedom to kind of play out the way that works for me so I've sat on interview panels. I've taught, I've worked closely with students, I've mentored a number of students. I've done a number of events and activities to kind of bring the thinking and the ideas together because sometimes schools and institutions can be quite siloed so how do you actually know each other from within. I also work for an organisation called Counterpoints Arts and in short they seek to try to shift the way we think and talk about migration. Yes, people who are keeping an eye on in England right now would know that the energy around migration and displacement is actually quite negative and it's quite toxic. So the organisation tries to find ways to normalise it and the programme that I run is called Pop Culture and Social Change so using the pop culture space to disrupt the narratives, the negative narratives so we've done a song with a really well known recording artist called Daisy Leisha and she works with football fans to come up with a football chant, it's really quite fun, you should look it up, it's called Unity. And then also I do a lot of consultancy around equality and diversity, you know, working with organisations that want to develop their policies or their statements or need some kind of support or help. So I do quite a lot of around that and my big, I guess, hat is if I haven't got enough is I am the co-founder of a showcase platform that's located in South Africa called the Pan-African Greater Exchange and we call it PACE for short. And it really is about creating a space for artists on the continent, be able to meet the global arts professionals in their space rather than always having to come off and having the challenges of visas and all those other things. So that's a quick package of what I do so I never know what to really call that but it's all things that I enjoy and all things that kind of speak and link together. I love, I love the diversity of all of the hats that you wear and I, you know, in my conversations with you privately it's just been really, really inspiring to see how you sort of pollinate this work, cross-pollinate it and bring all of these different skills and conversations into different spaces in creative ways. So I just am constantly fascinated by that. Yeah, I would love to learn more a little bit about the equity diversity and inclusion work that you do, given that it is so relevant in the European and Indian American context at the moment with Black Lives Matter and various other social movements going on. I'm curious from your experience what that looks like in the artistic space in Britain, for example, as opposed to in your work on the African continent. I think when I talk about equality and diversity, the starting point is diversity exists. We don't need to invent it, it's here. What we often talk is the equality part of the equity part is the bit that's often missing. So when I was at the Arts Council in England I was there for about nearly nine years. We recognize that the organization had been maybe 60 years old and we recognize that the group of people that were the most disadvantaged were the African, the Caribbean and the Asian artists in those communities. So they set up an initiative called decibel and decibel had a number of programs, some of them were funding and grant giving. Sometimes it was about initiatives that were in partnership with other parts of the organization or other outside of external organizations. Some of it was about policy development, so I got to work across the board and one of the platforms that I got particularly known for was a showcase platform which is a kind of evolved version of the showcase that I was running at Arts Council. And I think one of the things we noticed when we were at Arts Council is every time we came to other teams to say what are you doing around equality and diversity, people would almost see it as like the diversity police, like oh god, here they come again. So we thought there's going to be a different way to talk about equality and diversity where people don't dread it, they don't feel like they're being scolded. So we started to think about what was missing from the conversation and what was missing from the conversation was the creative case. We used to have a legal case, which was, you have to do it's the law or it's the policy of the organization or it's in the government of the organization. So there was the business case, well it's great for business and everybody understands that M case, then there was a moral case which almost felt like helpful poor little people, and we felt like that with the moral case in itself. So it's almost like if someone got out of bed on the wrong side, then you were screwed because you basically were relying on their goodwill. So there was nothing in it for the artist, you were relying on somebody else's, something outside of yourself that took the power within the individual. So the creative case for diversity basically says that it's great if you want excellence in your arts practice, you have to have diversity. So what we did is we took examples of what we call the dead white men, people like Balanchine, Shorj Balanchine, and Egor Shorinsky, who were exiled Jews that came to New York and actually did a lot in terms of the way we look at contemporary practice. And they could see fundamentally, especially Mr. Rinsky when he came to New York, he saw that there was something interesting happening in Harlem, the whole jazz scene, and actually was quite fascinating. It was fascinating because the jazz scene in America at the time was a real commentary on who America was, it was fast, it was diverse, it was contradictory, it was a number of different things, but it actually was almost the, it was the voice of the New America. And we looked at these cases and said, look, if you want to get to excellence, it isn't just about diversity in terms of race. You look at these great examples from the disability sector where actually a disabled artist's practice or way of looking at things has actually helped people look at artwork more interestingly. There was a guy called Clament Adu here in the UK, he was a musician, and he got into an accident and he became a power bleacher. And of course, for somebody who's a musician like this, this is a hard work. He worked quite closely with some scientists and researchers who said, look, who decides on what playing is who decides that this is playing. Is it all the things that you can be using within the body to think about what playing looks like. So they built an instrument called Headspace, and actually he's become quite famous and I don't know if those of you who engage with the Olympics in the UK, which was one of the most successful Paralympics, they had a youth orchestra with these instruments to support disabled young people to be able to be and to play and to have a dream. And of course that for me begs the question of who's your point, who decides that that's playing or that is playing, you know. There's a theme to me, it's called the Slam Point Theory, it comes out of 70s feminism feminist theory. And Slam Point Theory basically says, the further you are from the centre of the action where everything's what everything's taking place, the more likely you are to have a better overview. And he said, while you may be in the margins. So at the centre, if you imagine a bowl of people standing around the edge of the bowl, other marginalized communities, and then the people in the centre of the mainstream if you like. What they say is because you have to constantly scan the landscape and you're also scanning with other people with different viewpoints so somebody who's in a wheelchair has got a very different viewpoint to where they navigate the world and how I do. But if I hang out with them long enough, I'm going to pick up things and I'm going to be like, ah, okay, this is really interesting approach. I've never thought about that before. So Slam Point Theory says you may be marginal, but your viewpoint is anything but marginal because you have to do the work in order to get into the centre. And so what you find is people in the centre operate between the centre and they operate between the margins and some of those people in the centre work very closely with the margins. And what we absolutely recognise in the arts is the centre does not innovate. Innovation always comes from the margins. What often happens is the centre might take the work packaging. Sometimes the people in the margins don't even recognise for a while, but that's actually their ideas. But this theory is a beautiful way of looking at why we need diversity in the arts. It's just great for the arts. It's just far more interesting activity. So, yeah, that's kind of a little bit of a snapshot of what it looks like in the UK. Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I dropped off a little bit in between, but we've got the gist of it. So thank you so much for sharing that. It's really interesting to me to hear you speak about equity and diversity and the idea that diversity exists. The work that we need to do is equity. That's very profound. This is a subjective question, but what would you say equity looks like in the performing arts field or do we need to make an equitable performing arts space on the African continent? I mean, this is something I've thought about a lot actually. I think things like, and I'm going to do a bit of a fortune, criticism. Criticism absolutely needs to have more diverse voices because if you look at, even if you work with, we're just working with the canon of what people describe as theatre. So there's an international theatre canon, especially for the global north. You've only got the same people critiquing it. How are you really going to evolve and diversify that canon itself? So I'm quite interested because I read a piece on the blog, and I do recall the ladies name, but it's something that it really got me thinking. She had gone to see a play at the public theatre, and the public theatre, halfway through the play, the black characters died, and they left the body on the stage for the rest of the duration of the play. She was one of 20 art critics that had been invited to critique this. And so she, obviously for her, leaving the body on the stage for the end to the end of the play, for her was a commentary on the abuse and the violence of black men in America, right? She said none of the other critics actually picked up on that. But what she said that was quite important that really resonated with me, she said, what does that do to the form? What does that do to the artist? The artist and the critic need that tension in order for the artist to grow into rethink things or to not have to rethink things, to re-articulate things. They need that, they need that, they've strong criticism. And if you've not got that, then actually what is missing? And then she said also, what's missing when all of the critics at 20-yard didn't pick up? And it was bang in the middle of all these shootings and things that were going on in America being more evident. You know, we were seeing a video every week, you couldn't even keep up with this or someone you'd seen. And I'm in the UK and I understood straight away when I was reading her criticism. So I think it's things like that where people, how will they see the viewpoint? How can I really understand the viewpoint of someone who's visually impaired and grown up in Brooklyn or grown up in east of London? I can't. I can be around it, but it's not the same as having them write from their own experience. So I think criticism is important. I think alongside the criticism, it's about giving people space, especially the diverse practice, you know, so you have, I sit on a theater board in the UK and we had a very tough task of replacing an excellent artistic director, Madney Eunice, and he announced in September, I'm going, I've got a big job somewhere else. And we did the interviews in October. And what that meant is all the people that have been watching this space saw how he'd grown the space and grown the conversation around diversity in the arts. And he's really dynamic. He's cross cutting. He brought in so many different voices. There was no artist that could say they didn't feel comfortable at the Bush Theatre in London. And it was new writing, but the really great stuff. And what I saw in interviews when people were crying and I found it actually quite traumatising because I realised that they found a space where they could 100% do the work that had driven them to be in theatre in the first place. Many people that were coming from interviews had sort of assorted to doing things in the canon. Most probably things that didn't particularly excite them, but they did it to be accepted within the theatre community. And what I realised very quickly is I said, we've done the interviews in February. So a good few months after he'd made his announcement, people would have come, they would have had time to remember, to remember their own voice, to remember their authentic voice, and to come with a programme that they felt was very dynamic. And it was an interesting exercise and I said to myself, with the work that we're doing at PACE, this was an important space for people to be able to experiment and play without judgement. Because actually if you're coming from a marginal community and you really want to do new writing, or your work that's very different to what's accepted, sometimes you have to give up something, you do have to give up something, you're either giving up getting paid and being able to make a living and have a family in these things because you're doing your new stuff that lots of people don't get and you're taking a bit of a risk, or you're going into the space of making work that's within the canon and you're absolutely recognising that there's a bit of you that you're giving up, there's a bit of you that you're losing because it's not really your hard work, it's not really what you came to do in the first place. So yeah, I think criticism, having a space for new writing and new voices and platforms to be able to present those works to people who are curious, I think are important, I think having people having an understanding of policy, how policy is developed, that being at the Arts Council was incredibly painful at some points, I might tell you there, but when I look back I'm very very glad for the experience because I have a better understanding of how things work and how decisions are made. I think things like having very good mentors, you have to have mentors and sponsors and people who advocate for you when you're not in the room. I think going out to international spaces and engaging with your peers outside of your local space, this is what I guess has worked for me. I'm sure I think when I first left the Arts Council it was much, I was far more better received by the international community than I was in England. And then eventually after about four years I trickled back and then I started getting lots more interest in England but initially when I first left Arts Council England I was doing lots and lots of my work was international. Yeah, I mean I hear you as you speak about criticism as well I hear you talking about even changing our standards right like I think there's a space for changing our standards of what we understand as good work. And the more work that we see that is new that breaks the form breaks the traditional barriers, it opens up our understanding of things that are possible in and out of the theatrical space so really interesting to hear you say that as well and there's also a reason why I think international work you know work from all over the world is important in terms of looking at various theater canons. Speaking about new platforms and speaking about spaces where new work can be shared. I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about pace. And I came in first contact with it through Irwin mass and Roberto Levito sort of connected us initially and had the privilege of attending the virtual exchange this year, but for our audiences who haven't attended or aren't sure what pace is. Tell us about this, this monstrous project that you have that you dreamt up and executing at this moment. Oh, gosh. Well, when I was an Arts Council, England, I ran a showcase platform called this performing art showcase. And I was really lucky because they gave me a lot of autonomy, they gave me a decent budget, and I was able to develop really really well showcasing for artists. So it actually came out of the fact that Arts Council England they fund, I think at the time they had about 1000 companies that they core funded, and they kept saying to their organizations, you need to diversify your you need to work more with Black, Asian and Caribbean artists because there was a focus around that. And African Asian and Caribbean artists should rather. And they would say, we don't know where they are. So this idea came up. It was actually first before I got to the Arts Council, but what I did is I came in on the second year of just above in 2000s and, and five. Basically, what it was, it was a showcase platform to spotlight and diverse practice to increase touring opportunities and business and partnerships because we know that's what makes the arts will go round but a lot of these artists would say to us, we don't know how to go outside of our region. We don't have anybody in Manchester in London or in Birmingham. So we said what we know the more we'll put you all together and we created this platform. When I went to, I was invited by my Delano Moreno who's now at Ipica. She was working for a cool tour in Australia. She invited me to come and speak about it but she really liked the platform. And when I was there, I met Ricardo Peach. About two years, three years later, Ricardo Peach moved to South Africa to run the Freistat Festival. And he said to me, you know your showcase. I know you want to do it in West Africa, but would you be interested in coming to South Africa? It just, it made sense. Initially, I wasn't sure, but I went to Blomfontein in South Africa where Pace is located and I could see the possibilities because I recognize one thing. Artists from Africa constantly, you will know this, um, um, from your own network, your own experiences of your friends and, and people on the continent. But the first thing you have to think about is your visa. And actually, are you even going to get the visa? It's not even about getting into the platform. It's about, um, getting that visa, that not. So there's some countries that are easier to get visas than others. And I thought, well, if we do it on the continent, wouldn't it make sense that most Africans can get into South Africa and most of the world can get into South Africa. They don't have a difficult visa process like the UK, or the US. So we set up this platform with a very similar view to what we set up the platform, how the platform was set up in England, because to be quite frank, when I hear artists tell me what they need, there's nothing on the continent that I haven't heard in England before or in other parts of the world. It's always the same concerns. Often it's about access, it's often to do with how funding is set up, or how the arts itself is set up that prevents certain groups of people from accessing it and making it, enjoying it, whatever. So with PACE, we said, right, we're going to look at the showcase platforms like Decibel, like Australian performing arts market, Hams in Korea, and we're going to build on what they're doing. So we're going to, we've got a bit of freedom to kind of make it the way to make it more equitable for the artists that we're trying to track, but also for the arts professionals that we want to come to see the world. So we, it's a three day event. We have a number of stands, tour ready, which is where it's ready to go, that someone can book tomorrow. Then we have the work in progress, which still needs a bit of investment, it might be creative, a creative producer or another artist to help sharpen it. It might be a funding, a financial investment. Then we also have a pitching. So we have speed pitching for people who still are trying to figure out how to even package their idea, where they go from table to table and sharpen as they go along. And then we have sort of short pitching sections of about 15 minutes. So we also do a number of programmes like we have a producers lab, where we work with people in our network to support producers on the continent. And just like in England, we have a shortage of people of colour who are producing. It's very similar challenges are very similar on the continent. There's probably more to think about on the continent. The base challenges are the same. And we also do a dramaturgy lab and we're going to be doing something actually in partnership with Tyro Afalabi and how round so I think that will be coming in October, but we're looking at a dramaturgy within the Africa context, and we work with artists to help them think beyond their local space to help them think more about the work and how they sharpen it for a global audience but without losing who they are within that space. So the first lab we did we had a dramaturge that was from Belgium, because it was funded by our very generous Dutch embassy of South Africa. So we we always have to bring in some Dutch. So we had a Dutch Indonesian guy. We had Saki Bota who's a very well known festival director and playwrights and from the Africans perspective. Then we had Fumiadi Wale, who led it who was somebody who has, I would describe as a translator between African diaspora dance but also theatre and she's also a dramatist. So having everybody kind of use their viewpoint to help the artist think through their practice. We also have another platform which is open really to anyone who wants to experiment and it's called a pace fringe and it's part of the Freistat fringe program, and we say to people, look, you can, I think it's like 100 US dollars to get a space venue to the venue will give you the lighting and the staff to set you up. Mostly, if you need props, some of the props come from the theatre department of the University of Freestate. And what we do is we encourage makers, theater makers, people who are trying to sharpen their voice to come and just present their work. One of my colleagues that I worked with Hassan Mahamdani, he's in partnership with the Royal Court and he did live at a play, and I saw it at the Royal Court and everyone that was anyone was at that scratch event. But what happened is when he brought it to South Africa, it was a completely different conversation. There was Senegalese there, there was Zimbabwean there, there was Kenyans there, there was people from all different parts across Africa. There was also the Australians, the Singaporeans, all the people who came. And the conversation was so much more richer, having all those different viewpoints, especially what you found a lot of the African viewpoints. You can see that we're really considered, they really thought about his decisions, his intention with the script, with the way that, with how he packaged his story. And I think he found it quite overwhelming to get that really depth of richness of feedback. And it struck me in the moment that these spaces are very important for people who've been stuck with the canon. We have quite well-known artists like Locke Vakerman, who's a very famous Dutch playwright who wrote Poison, and some people that came from New York, some people that came from Nigeria, but basically presenting their work to an audience. They found it, which was unexpected, there's a lot of them picked up bookings. We didn't expect them to, we just thought, oh, but they picked up bookings from the network of people that we brought in for pace. So that also was what I realized was a really important moment. And I've had a lot of interest from Europe and other African countries saying, look, I kind of want to test out some ideas. So really, Pace Verras was a meeting point. It was a professional space. It was to give people a sense that context is king. So you can sometimes hear about context, but when you're in the space, it's a very different experience. I had a really lovely lady called Peg Shuler Armstrong. She was at Lincoln Theatre. She was the former chair of IPA. And she said, I never thought of going somewhere different. I've always tried to diversify. It didn't occur to me to just go somewhere very different. And she was very, very well received. Lots of people didn't know who she was, but people just liked her and gravitated towards her. I saw that she was giving some of the younger women advice because some of them had challenges in their workplace. And she just really became a really kind and very generous person to our Pace community. And you found that there's a lot of people that nurture and support not just the Africans on the continent or the people on the artists on the continent, but they also support the Pace network that goes beyond the continent, which I think is quite nice as a really nice outcome of Pace that wasn't expected. Yeah, I mean, even from my own experience there, unfortunately, I haven't been able to attend it in person when it's yet, but my virtual experience of it as well was very rewarding because I got to connect with people having been a student at NYU. I got a chance to connect with folks at the Abu Dhabi Arts Center and a lot of other really, really interesting producers, presenters, just to learn more about their journey and their process, and then even artists. So I really hear you when you talk about it just being a space and network and the offshoots in terms of impact, the offshoots of that kind of programming are always so rewarding to see. So really thrilling to hear you speak about that. What was the difference for you or what was the largest sort of disparity in the in-person convening versus how you had to navigate the COVID pandemic? I'd love for you to share with our listeners what decisions you made and how you decided to have Pace during COVID. We already were on track to do the program was ready, we were already marketing it before lockdown. We were actually quite proud. We were ahead of ourselves because last time when we opened, when I launched Pace, I literally had got a nod in February that some funding had come through and we did it in the June. It nearly killed me, it was so intense. So this time around I was like, great, we're already, and then obviously lockdown happened, but straight away when lockdown happened, we were online very quickly. We were doing talks, we were asking people where they were at, what ideas, what they were doing to kind of thrive and sustain themselves because of course some countries were given emergency funds to artists, some people were getting furlough. So we decided that we'd keep conversations going and we're really lucky because Ricardo Peach is my business partner in South African Australian. He actually did his PhD in something to do with experimental and digital space. So he's all over social media and digital space all the time. So he was very quick, like said, let's just do this. And then AirMeet, a really interesting and interactive platform that allows you to sort of play and is set up to make you think that you're in a theater, a venue space. Said, look, will you test out our platform by putting your first event there? We thought we'll just give it a go. So we did it between AirMeet and Zoom. And we just spoke to all the artists and said, look, we have spoken to our funders and our funders have said that we can give you funding for your data, but we knew that some people would use it to eat and do some small things they needed to do. But the funders are incredibly generous about saying, you know, we recognize the charity and we like your plan. So we, what we tried to create a couple of little spaces within the entangled where we paid artists. And because we wanted to make sure that we were generating some solutions, you know, so mostly artists came on board. We decided that we would put everything that was work that was ready to go in a full-length video online. We wouldn't expect people to watch it. But what we would do is we packaged it by saying we'll have an online version. And then for me, who ran the geometry lab because she's such a good cultural mediator, we decided that we'd get her to interview all the people so that people had a bit more of an understanding of what they were looking at. And it worked out really well. So a lot of people watched the interview. So you saw the video, the full-length video of the piece. And then an interview with, for me, speaking to the artists. And then during PACE, we had a discussion where people could ask more questions. And I think that worked out quite well. During PACE, we did speed and pitching, which was quite funny because some people didn't realise that only the artists that registered for the speed pitch needed to move tables. Some of the artists who hadn't registered thought, oh, I want to do it now. And then kind of messed up the flow a bit, which was quite funny. We had some talks where we spoke to people. We always made sure that we have fair representations as we can access of those on the artists and cultural leaders on the continent. So we also had people, we had panel discussions as well. And then we had networking moments where we were encouraging people to meet each other. And one of the things we're quite keen to do is whether you're an artistic director, a venue director, a community artist, we just respect everyone at the same level. We just try to say that you're welcome because they are, if we want to create a fair and equitable space, you've got to recognise the contributions that a lot of community arts spaces contribute to shaping and evolving artists. And sometimes do not get the recognition or the respect. So we try to create spaces where that everyone feels quite welcome to, and that their contributions are valued. Yeah, it definitely felt that way. I think Amit was a really interesting platform to do that. So, yeah, thank you for sharing. So I want to open this opportunity up to all our viewers. If you are tuned in on any of our Facebook pages or on the HowlRound site, you do have the opportunity to post a question in the comments. So any of you have any questions for Nikkei, please feel free to go ahead and post them in the comments as we enter the last quarter of our time together. I do have a couple of questions lined up myself. But again, you know, if there's any questions they'll get to us and we'll be able to answer them in the last few minutes. And meanwhile, I, you know, I always like to ask my panellists this question because I feel that there's a really interesting, not interesting but growing interest, that's it, a growing interest of young people in the arts. And so as somebody who has had a really interesting and exciting career and as somebody who wears multiple hats, what advice would you have for a young person interested in entering the field. And, you know, maybe even more specifically for young African interested in entering the field. I think, gosh, a young person entering the arts, I think I would say to them to try and master some aspect of it. There's so many people who will call themselves an expert because they've read two books, and they've not really understood the mastery and actually within Africa, we see a lot of mastery, we see a lot of artisans. You know, somebody can fix a car with a piece of string and something because they really understand the workings of a car, or you'll see artists. I mean, South Africa, I was always amazed that I used to say, gosh, all South Africans can sing. Sing is amazing. I've never heard anyone sing badly, you know. But the thing is, I think you have to have something that you muster that you're very good at that you want to stand inside out that's something that is connected to your passion because that can help grow other aspects of your practice. And I think sometimes people forget that it's important to know your craft, you know, it might be, if you're a musician, for instance, it might be that you're into a particular art form, but there's not a particular genre, but there's nothing to stop you from going to understand the composition from a contemporary Western perspective or an Asian, an Indian perspective or something that is very different to your space so that you can constantly satisfy your curiosity, you know. I think it's good to have a mental and respect them and simple things like thank you, the amount of work I do for people and I don't get a thank you. Like they'll ask me questions and I'll respond. I'll give them a response and I don't get, I might take a day to pull together an email with all the information they need. And I don't get a thank you and I said, thank people, be gracious, I think is, and this is, this is an advice to everyone because so many people take it for granted if you can pay people, try to and pay people don't assume because you're broke that you can't pay. Payment isn't always money. Payment can be intelligence. Payment can be other resources. Payment can be if you come to my town, you can stay on my sofa or whatever, but think about ways that you can make the art space flow a bit better because I think we asked too much. I do it, I'm not innocent through it. But I do try to pay people back if I ask them to do so for free. I do try to find ways to add some value. Sometimes I ask them what they need and other times I just promote them behind the scenes to other people. I think that kind of attitude of gratitude is so necessary in our community because we're so small in the sense that like the global theater landscape as big as it may seem there's always a mutual connection and the word spreads and I think it's really important just as you emphasized to keep that spirit of generosity alive amongst our people. So yeah, really thank you for those words of advice. I guess I mean, I guess we wrap up and I'd love to share with our audience members what you're working on at the moment. I know you're speaking a little bit about it earlier on, but what specifically is there anything we should watch out for. And also if there's a way, what's the best way for us to, you know, follow you or reach out if people are interested in connecting to collaborate. Oh, what I'm working on is I'd like to in terms of the pan-African creative exchange. I would like to do more satellite activities so we actually started the conversation Krishna and we will still be coming to Kenya to do something. And I would also, so I'm quite interested to do to tap into spaces that we haven't got a lot of contact with so I'm quite interested in Frankfurt, Africa, I'm learning, I'm improving my French right now to do something there. So the satellite activity could be a hybrid event, it could be a physical event. It's something that I'm in the middle of exploring for pace to ensure that it's truly pan-African. I'm also quite interested in any of the networks that are out there that are interested in this self-self conversation. We've been talking to Brazil. We've been talking to Korea. We've been talking to the self-self collective in Jamaica because I'm very interested in the self-self conversation. If anyone knows of anything that's particularly exciting, a network, an individual, an organization that is doing interesting things, please just flag them to us. I would say to reach me if it's anything direct link, like a direct question that's specific to pace or the work that I'm doing at counterpoint, you can just, you can either find me on LinkedIn, or I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I can't say I'm brilliant at checking all of them. I will probably better at checking in the LinkedIn so you can shoot me, but just in your, if you send me a note on anything, just say I'll make you through HowlRound or something because sometimes I am, I take a long time to take people in as friends because sometimes on Facebook I get a lot of questions or just saying hi but not saying anything behind the high. So I would say those or you can contact Krishna or HowlRound because they have my details, but I'm quite easy to find Nika Jonah, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, thank you. And then at the Pan-African Creative Exchange website you can also write on that website and I will get the email, the info, yeah. Wonderful, yes, thank you so much. And I believe there'll be links, there's links in your bio as well that are on the website for the Pan-African Creative Exchange so folks can sort of check the website out and navigate through it. Thank you so much for your time, I don't know that we have any questions from our audience members at this moment but really, really appreciate you sharing your insights and having this conversation with me for the last few minutes. And it's always learned something new from you so thank you for sharing. Really, really appreciate it and I hope you enjoy the sunshine in Britain, we'll be coming to take it back very soon I hope. You have it, we will block the envisors over the sunshine. One thing I want to add actually in terms of my advice to people is for people to recognise the public face of an institution or a network and the covert space of the network. And I describe it as a shadow structure, you've got to understand what is public, what has been said publicly on what's really going on and where the decisions are being made. And you can read that by just observing and having conversations and picking up cues and speaking to people who are aware of what it looks like. So I think I just wanted to add that because it's something that I've been thinking a lot about and I think it's an important space. And what you should be going to has got its public face and it's got its covert space, especially with these systemic structures that need to be disbanded, that's what it looks like. Right, right. Well, I guess as a follow up then somebody looking to infiltrate that space. How would you recommend you start. I'll give you an example. When I was at the Arts Council, I took on everything they said, it's £10 million investment. I bought in the fact that the law had changed and I thought, wow, this is amazing, I get to be part of this. And bit by bit I started to see all these barriers. And then I realised there was another decision making body that was making the decisions. And so how you get to know it, some of the secretaries, some of the past people that you connected with that used to work there would explain it because sometimes you get more information from the outside than when you're actually within the organisation because people outside feel more comfortable to talk to you because they're not there anymore. So, and also people within the organisation will talk. So I just think you observe, we had secretaries that would tell us about the receptionist, office services. We got on with most people, your kind, you engage with people, they start to share information, confidential information. But the important part of it is that you have to be very careful how you manage that information because you don't want to expose someone that has actually been trying to help you. So you've got to be quite sharp and it can sometimes be very taxing because you're operating with a lot of information and you sometimes want to share it but you have to find the way to share it without exposing the people that were trying to help you. So most people who are in politics and things like that recognise that but this is something that I present that goes on with a lot of organisations. So the shadow is what's really happening in the shadows. Right, right, and it's important to be strategic about that and change things from within. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what an empowering note to end on. Yeah, thank you so much again. I really appreciate your time and folks can reach out to us when they're interested in reaching out to you and or directly follow you on your platforms. And we will see you next week or with another panelist as we continue our series and our journey of sharing the creative practice of African women on the continent. Thank you so much Zina and Barbie for being our interpreters and to Hal Grant for hosting the series on the website and producing it with us. Have a wonderful evening everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks Hal and that's pretty much my thanks Zina.