News
See more about Culture Shift Kenya II at our Facebook page and at the British Council’s Culture Shift website.
Our ‘Reimagining Technology’ sheets appear below.
The schedule for our event at Pawa 254, Fri 15th and Mon-Wed 18-20th February, appears below.
Call for Participation
Applications are now closed. The deadline for applications was Thursday 7th February, 2013. 6pm Kenyan time
Are you a creative who is passionate about film, TV, video or animation and want to extend their possibilities and reach?
Are you a technologist or maker who wants to get creative with mobile, apps, embedded systems and beyond?
Come participate in a creative sprint organised by the British Council. You will work in teams to create eye-opening ideas that will expand Kenya’s capability in digital film, video and animation. We are recruiting creatives and technologists to work on themes set by local creative agencies. The agencies are looking for new ideas on how to make, distribute and show these digital media, as well as to embed them in other forms. The two winning teams will be awarded a total of £5000 to develop their ideas further, and ongoing mentoring will be arranged where possible. The goal of the event is to create new working relationships and to expand the local digital media ecosystem in locally relevant ways.
Kenya’s Culture Shift is being co-produced between Tim Kindberg of African Interactive and the Pervasive Media Studio (Bristol) and David Muriithi of Creative Enterprise Centre (Nairobi), with core, local creative organizations such as Buni TV and Kwani Trust bringing both participants from their networks and ‘provocation themes’ to the table. The UK creative digital mentors for Culture Shift Kenya II are filmmaker Nathan Hughes and digital strategist Andrew Mugoya, Technical Director of Asilia.
We are thrilled to have as our esteemed panellists film maker Wanuri Kahiu, Jo Morrison, Director of Digital Projects at Central St Martins, and Michael Onyango of the Kenya Film Commission.
Our presenters are user experience expert Shikoh Gitau of ummeli.com and director Alexandros Konstantaras, formerly of Jitu films.
What you will gain
Work on exciting new ideas and the chance to take them further. Meet new people and organisations to work with. Hear presentations and talk to experts on hand about creative practices with the latest technologies. Compete to be awarded £3000 for the winning team and £2000 for the runner-up, to be divided between the freelancers on the teams.
Where and when
Pawa 254 will host the event, which will take place on Friday 15th and Mon-Wed 18-20th February, 2013.
Who we are looking for
We are seeking creatives and technologists who are open to expanding their horizons by working together and gracefully putting technology to creative use — making new experiences of film and related media available to audiences in Kenya and beyond.
We are recruiting creative people in a relevant discipline, including film makers, animators, producers, directors and writers.
We’re also interested in technologists keen to work with and learn from creatives, whether you are a programmer, a maker or a user interface designer. Or a creative technologist!
To apply
Apply without delay since space is very limited. Send a brief email outlining your background and experience and why you would make a good participant to cultureshift@africaninteractive.org. Keep it no longer than about a page, and relevant to our requirements as stated in the previous section, Who We Are Looking for. We’ll select only candidates who fit that description well and can tell us clearly why.
Schedule (subject to alteration)
Friday 15 February. Introductions, scene-setting, creative warm-up and group formation
| Time | Activity |
| 08:30 | Arrival & welcome |
| 09:00 | Introductions (1 minute each: who you are, what you do & why you are here) |
| 09:30 | Introduction to Culture Shift on the Digital Moving Image; the Themes |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 10:45 | Presentations by mentors Tim Kindberg, Andrew Mugoya and Nathan Hughes. Q&A |
| 12:00 | Warm-up exercise: I am a Camera |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:00 | Warm-up exercise: Quick-fire scenarios. |
| 14:00 | Idea tables. Four people, a theme, a quick-fire scenario and some tech |
| 14:30 | Report-backs from the idea tables |
| 15:00 | Break |
| 15:15 | New groups at idea tables, new ideas and reports. |
| 16:00 | Wrap-up. Homework (a bit of research) |
Monday 18 February. Project definition and research.
| Time | Activity |
| 08:30 | Arrival. Remembering from Friday and review & reflection |
| 09:00 | Group formation (with viable ‘seed’ ideas). |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 10:45 | Go. Groups work on their statements: which theme(s) they address and how, what the idea is and why it has value – and to whom. |
| 12:00 | Visits by mentor(s) to ensure all the preceding have been done |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:00 | Continue |
| 14:30 | Break |
| 14:45 | Presentation by Shikoh Gitau (Ummeli.com) |
| 15:15 | Continue |
| 16:00 | Visits by mentors: construct to-do lists |
| 18:00 | Dinner together |
Tuesday 19 February. Reflection and prototype development.
| Time | Activity |
| 08:30 | Arrival & continuation. Construction of the prototype (physical/storyboard/code/video…) |
| 09:30 | Continue. Visits by mentors: are prototype plans viable ? |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 10:45 | Presentation by Alexandras Konstataras (Jitu films) |
| 11:15 | Continue |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:00 | Continue |
| 14:00 | Mix up: temporarily mix up all the groupings, no more than one member from each group, so people can listen to one another’s troubles, ask for and offer advice |
| 14:30 | Break |
| 14:45 | Continue |
| 16:00 | Visits by mentors: feedback on plans for presentations |
| 18:00 | Dinner together |
Wednesday 20 February. Presentations and feedback/discussion.
| Time | Activity |
| 08:30 | Arrival & work on presentations |
| 10:30 | Break |
| 10:45 | Continue. Visits by judging panel and mentors |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 13:00 | Presentations to panel. Judging |
| 14:30 | Results and open floor discussion. Statements from judges and agencies about what they’ve seen |
| 15:30 | Break |
| 15:45 | Visits by mentors. What next for each group? |
| 17:00 | Cocktails |
Reimagining technology
What ‘unreasonable’ expectations do you have of these technologies? That is, what do you imagine they can do to stretch your eye-opening moving image ideas, as opposed to what people might tell you they are capable of?
- Adobe Premiere
- Arduino
- Camera Phone
- GPS
- Kinect
- Matatu
- MHL
- Mobile phone
- Pico projector
- Raspberry Pi
- RFID
- Vending Machine
For further information
Contact David Muriithi in Nairobi muriithi.david@gmail.com, +254 (0)722530245.
