Participation in cultural exchage dialogue meetings with friendly nations
- kenyan public officials have been in the last four years been invited by friendly nations to learn and bench mark on cultural policies and on creative programmes and institutions. Among the countries that have engaged Kenyan officials in such dialogues and exchages are; Scotland through the Creative Scotland that invited the department of culture officials together with adminstrators of the Go down Arts Centre to Visit creative Scotland. The Go Down Arts Centre after the vist have continued to engage creative scotland through artists residency and capacity building programmes for artists. The Goethe Institute has in the last four years supported varous kenyan artists and entreprenuers to aceess oppotunities to perform and engage with German artists. The United Kingdom through British council has supported several arttists progrmmes and have provided direct support to some kenyan artists to travel outside the country for various culural exchges. The French Cultural centre over the last four years has provided spaces for performance and exhibition to kenyan artsits and has provided oppotunities for exchage between kenyan and French artits. French Cultural Centre has also provided space for cultural policy dialogues between public officilas, artsits and creators. The Swedish Embassy has also in the last four years provided direct support for kenyan artsits and creative entreprenuers and in 2016 they launched the Sweden@Kenya programme that aims at enhancing parneships between creative entreprenuers from kenya and sweden. The Italian Cultural institute has in the last four years supported kenyan artists and enterpreneurs and have facilitated several exchages aimed at capacity building of the sector. The Venezuelan embassy during the last four years have partnered and supported kenyan theatre artisis and have faciliated a cultural exchages between artsits from the two countries.The Chinese Embassy has implemented several cultural exchages and have faicilated artists and public officials to travel to China for capacity building.
The main feature of the measure has been the implentation of cultural exchage programmes that target individual artists, cultural groups , entreprenuers and pubilc officilas. The cultural exchage oppotunities have been provided through the foreign missions working in kenya with the objective of building capacity for cultural entreprenuers, enhancement of market acess for kenyan cultural goods and services , participation at international cultural festivals and transfer of skills for the cultural and craetive sectors. Several kenyan artists have benefited from direct support in regard to travel costs accomodation and faciliation on visas aplications. Public officilas have also benefited from direct sposorships to attend and participate in trainings and capacity building on best parctices.
- improvement in the quality of local cultural goods and services
- enhanced networking between artists
-Transfer of skills
-identification of new markets for kenyan cultural goods and services
-Freindships established and ne understanding between nations
- enhanced cultural diplomacy
-new parnerships
- co creations
Most of the cultural exchages and programmes are funded directly by the foreign missions and their partners and donor agencies from their individual countries.