Fashion and art have always been closely linked, and this connection formed the starting point for the company NYH Concepts, which aims to showcase them in northern Nigeria and even further afield. The ultimate goal: to make the state of Kaduna Africa’s one-stop destination for art and fashion.
The Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition (KAFART), which is already in its fourth year, meets several objectives: to present crafts as a traditional art form that transcends time and celebrate it through an exhibition that will showcase woven textiles, embroidery, sculpture, tie-dye and other techniques.
To top it all off, workshops and masterclasses will be organised alongside the exhibition in order to share artisanal techniques with up-and-coming young creatives.
The Association KILE in Mali aims to promote training and creation in the fields of cinema, audiovisual and digital by encouraging the emergence of young talents and innovative creations. The Association KILE hopes to become a centre of training and artistic excellence in digital art in Bamako.
The “CINE SAHEL” project aims to bring together young filmmakers from the Sahel countries for a training and film screening programme. The films will be shown in public spaces in northern Mali, followed by debates, and a digital platform will be created to enable the Sahel countries to view them on social media.
The Association Magg'ando, based in Dakar in Senegal, is a space for artistic and cultural production bringing together multi-talented artists and dancers from 10 African countries. It aims to contribute to Africa’s reputation through the power of dance.
The “NU FECC’ATTE” project aims to create a space for dialogue between artists and audiences, to help build the artistic and teaching skills of up-and-coming dancers from the Association Magg'ando.
The project encompasses several activities, such as sharing experience with apprentice teachers at Magg’ando, movement and self-expression workshops, as well as a show and other artistic creation resulting from the workshops held over the previous months.
Since 2015, the Kanarimagik label has been producing educational and cultural resources for young people, their families and their education providers, in paper or digital format. Kanarimagik helps to advance education and Senegalese culture through the use of fun media such as drawing, comics and animated videos, in order to share knowledge in various fields.
The “DIGITOONZ AFRIKA 2023” project aims to showcase Senegalese comics. It includes the creation of a space dedicated to digital comics (La Maison de la Bande Dessinée et de l’Image) and professional training for key players in the sector. The project is seeking to modernise the Senegalese comics sector by also creating a “Webtoon” platform (online portal forcomics/manga).
ASSIB' ARTS Togo is an artistic and cultural association founded in 2017, which specialises in promoting African dance heritage and teaching art to young people. Its main aim is to help professionalise young names in dance and to raise awareness about the importance of protecting and promoting this heritage.
The Festival des Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Lomé, FA'ARTS, aims to professionalise young Togolese and African dancers by providing training and artistic residencies. The expected results include the training of 30 young artists and dancers, the creation of 5 dance shows and the broadcasting of over 15 professional shows in 5 Togolese towns.
The association Clinik’Art aims to use its resources to help promote culture and art with a view to the social, economic and personal development of people in Togo and Africa more widely.
The project Théâtre Chez Vous (Theatre at Home - TCV) was created to enable artists to continue working through the COVID period while reducing the risks of spreading the virus. The aim of this edition is to broadcast five shows in the five regions of Togo, with at least 15 broadcasts per region. The project also aims to strengthen the capacities of theatre companies in each region and create a national network to make theatre and the arts accessible to people from all levels of society.
The association SIKOTA aims to showcase African art and culture through dance, by promoting the practice of contemporary dance and the visual arts, along with intangible cultural heritage, and by fighting for the professionalisation of artists. It also contributes to the social integration of artists, economic development and the promotion of entrepreneurship and the cultural industries in Africa.
The project consists of selecting 10 semi-professional young women to take part in a training, research and creation residency, followed by a broadcast of the performance created in schools, cultural centres and government, non-government and foreign institutions. A business model will be implemented in order to make the resulting show profitable.
La Fabrik is a project that aims to sponsor different art forms and professionalise the arts sector, particularly stage arts, by supporting creation, production and dissemination. The goal is to integrate artistic practices, particularly theatre, into daily life to make them accessible to everyone, to showcase heritage and to encourage emancipation and fulfilment.
The “Fabrique de fictions” (Fiction Factory) seeks to combine theatre with urban heritage in the suburbs of Lomé. The project also aims to decentralise cultural activity by holding writing workshops and arts events and showing theatre performances in the suburbs to make art more accessible and reach isolated audiences.
“If you can’t go to the cinema, the cinema will come to you” – this is the raison d’être of the ATCNA (Association Togolaise du Cinéma Numérique Ambulant or Togolese Association of Travelling Digital Cinema). This association was founded in 2013 with a triple objective: to provide training in cinema professions to Togolese people living far from the capital, to produce awareness-raising films and to give the most isolated populations access to film screenings.
The project enables 20 Togolese participants, selected mainly from regions without access to quality training in cinema professions, to take part in a workshop to create short films lasting 15 to 30 minutes. These films will then be taken on a national tour of 30 screenings organised in the country’s most isolated rural areas, as well as in schools. At the end of the tour, they will also be broadcast on local Togolese television channels in order to reach a wider audience.
Based on the observation that age-old ways of sharing knowledge and values are gradually being forgotten in favour of rapid urbanisation and the rise of social media, the association “Promotion des Arts au Mali” (Promoting the Arts in Mali, PAM), also known as “Culture en Partage” (“Shared culture”), is dedicated to supporting cultural creation and sharing it with as many people as possible, especially the younger generations.
The work of Culture en Partage consists of bringing together figures from the cultural sector (theatre, dance, music, visual arts, publishing, etc.) and giving them international exposure. Providing employment for culture professionals, making African creation more accessible to as many people as possible and helping to showcase African cultures are just some of the association’s goals.
Its projects include La Maison des Solutions (The House of Solutions), set up in a cultural centre in Bamako, which is best described as a hub for cultural creation and technological innovation.
The two key actions resulting from this project are the Musée initiatique (“Museum of initiation”), which is aimed at cultural institutions and is part of the movement to present African artworks by going beyond the scope provided by traditional exhibition design (through the use of virtual reality, for example) and radio drama, an incubator for audio creations in African languages broadcast on radio and web-radio stations.