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A Report on NextLevel: Interviews |
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Written by Updates
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Monday, 14 September 2009 |
The NextLevel mentorship programme from The Imagine Company went into its second stage this Saturday at the SawaSawa restaurant in Nairobi’s Ngara district. The successful interviews of applicants, shortlisted after a public call for applications, were facilitated by The Imagine Company in a process sponsored by the Changamoto Arts Fund.
Next Level is a project of The Imagine Company that works on improving the production and appreciation of visual and performance arts through a series of mentorships and workshops.
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NextLevel performance arts applicants.
Photo: Jerry Riley/the Imagine Company
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The interviews were split into two stages. In the morning session, judges considered performance arts applications from a variety of art forms, ranging from song, dance and poetry, to theatre productions, scriptwriting and complex combinations of art forms. Budding artists from across Nairobi and even further afield presented their work experience and explained their weaknesses and obstacles to success, before a panel of interviewing judges.
The judges were tasked with finding individual artists, who, possessing an innate artistic ability and having shown sufficient resolve and motivation on their own, would benefit the most from being paired with more experienced, more accomplished hands for a funded two month mentorship. The judges’ briefs asked them to look for talent, for passion, ambition and the necessary aptitude for mentorship.
The sitting judges for the performance arts appraisals were singer and publisher Elizabeth Njoroge of Classics Magazine, producer and label owner Clement Rapudo of Calif Records and film producer and playwright Cajetan Boy of Et Cetera. These judges sat from 9am to 3pm conducting one on one interviews with 25 shortlisted applicants, and then grading live performances on the stage at SawaSawa Restaurant.
In the afternoon session, dedicated to performance arts, travel writer and photographer Jerry Riley of Generation Kenya and The Imagine Company, producer and playwright Cajetan Boy of Et Cetera and animator Ng’endo Mukii from Mediae sat through a lengthy session that started at 3pm and ended at 7pm. They considered applications from illustrators, animators, film makers, photographers and even a fashion designer. The applicants brought over portfolios, and offered project ideas that their potential mentors should help them accomplish.
The process now goes into stage three; matching selected applicants with such mentors as would best benefit them. The Imagine Company and the judges will be looking to facilitate the documentation of this process in video and the presentation of edited bits of it online and hopefully in the mainstream media too. Look out for these video diaries on KenyaImagine.com.
This round of the project will culminate in an evening of exhibition and performance, where the process and results will be shown off to the public for critical appraisal.
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Updates |
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