Storymoja Festival 2017 seeks your artist applications

Storymoja Festival 2017 seeks your artist applications for this year’s festival with its “Black Peace” theme. The festival runs from 27th September to 1st October 2017.

The Storymoja Festival has been an important space for the Kenyan creative community over the last decade. It has been hosting up to 9,000 guests to experience some of the best minds that the continent and the world has to offer. With this in mind the festival has been inviting writers, authors, musicians, actors, storytellers, poets, spoken word artists, photographers, and film makers from all over the world to come to Nairobi for East Africa’s biggest books and culture party since 2007. Some of the more famous guests of this festival are Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Kofi Awoonor, Yvonne Adhiambo Owour, and many many more.

This year has a bittersweet taste for Storymoja and Kenya as they both celebrate one decade. While we celebrate the birth of our hippest festival, we also remember with sadness as Kenya suffered through one of her darkest hours over an election dispute. It is the latter pain that it was only right that this year’s theme for the festival would be BLACK PEACE.

So how would this theme inform proceedings at the as yet unnamed venue? The team will be trying to explore the dynamics of human conflict above and beyond the spectrum of ethnic tensions. They want to use the arts to explore the different forms of conflict that affect human relations today; from mental health, to ethnic tensions, race relations, gender issues, social class disparities, religion among others.

So you think that this festival fits the bill for you? For the first time in a decade, you have the opportunity to apply for it. Who are you then? You are either a writer, authors, poet, artist (paint, craft, crawing, graphic, or graffiti, etc), musicians, filmmakers, dancer, actors, or storyteller. Any of these or you are in a career related to creative arts in a supportive role or in policy making.

Kindly remember to only apply using your own work, or in case of an agent, ensure that the intellectual property belongs to your client. Application deadline is 31st May 2017. Good luck.’

Update: The call out deadline has elapsed.