Construction of Multipurpose Performing Arts Hall.
Introduction
The Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya is a home to Hundreds of thousands of refugees from more than 15 nationalities with a large number of its residents being youth and young adolescents depending on humanitarian aid. A lot of humanitarian agencies have been doing their best to deliver different services to refugees to meet their basic needs. However, the creative and performing arts sector has been overlooked by agencies to serve refugees as a potential tool to address different social economic issues faced by refugees.
Within the camp there exist a lot of talents and creative arts among youth and young adolescents, which has rarely been noticed to serve them as source of income and psychotherapy tool to be self-reliant and improve their well-being. Among those are singers, musicians, comedians, actors, dancers, models, choreographers and others. This is because of the scarcity in adequate resources and mentorships to support young refugees to use their talents as source of income as an alternative way to solve high rate of unemployment and poverty among youth within the community.
To address this issue, Photofilm 4 change(Refugee Led organization) aims to establish Arts Centre with a permanent well equipped performing hall which will play a great role in monetizing talents and cultural preservation programs as well for this refugee camp that has been in existence for over 30 years without arts and cultural center.
The organization will be identifying potential Artists (both traditional and modern), organize different types of mentorship and training sessions to different categories of artists both refugees and host community to nurture their talents and assist them to prepare income generating shows and festivals. This will promote social economic integration and cohesion of Kakuma community given that the refugee camps are in the process to be locally integrated by the government of Kenya.
Secondly, Photofilm for change will be assisting Artists to create audiovisual contents of their arts to upload them on different social media platforms to increase their visibility to online community, expand market of their pieces of arts and earn income from those social media platforms.
Project Objectives
- Promote economic development by generating local jobs and monetizing talents through the use of the hall for local artists.
- Create a secure and versatile community space for artistic, cultural, educational, and social activities.
- Strengthen social cohesion by providing a place for interaction and meetings for refugees and local communities.
Project Description
- Location: Kakuma 3, Liza Hua Street, Kakuma Refugee Camp, Turkana County, Kenya.
- Capacity: Hall with a capacity to accommodate up to 600 people.
- Functions: preforming events, Film screenings/festivals, Theatre, cultural events and community gatherings.
Project Implementation
The project implementation has started in January 2024 with needs assessment step which included consultation with community members, artists and other stake holders to determine needs and expectations from different parts. After needs assessment, the organization came together with architects and engineers to create a sustainable design adapted to different opinions from stakeholders and the local climate. The hall design will allow the Use of eco-friendly materials and new sustainable construction techniques.
The construction of this hall will be done in 5 stages including excavation, foundation, walls elevation, roofing and finally finishing. Each stage of the construction process will be done according to the availability of funds.
We are currently in a process of searching potential patterners who are interested to patterner and collaborate with us on this project. The first stage which is excavation has started on 5th June 2024 and ended on 10 July 2024, this ground breaking activity has been supported by Rutgers University.
Are you interested to partner or collaborate with us to support this project and improve refugees livelihood trough arts and culture preservation? Contact us to discuss ways forward.