Wakati Wetu Festival (Kenya)

"Art plays a crucial role in shaping and renewing culture: it can shine a spotlight on truth, create moments of joy, or inspire us to act. In times like these, we need to empower artists like never before to help us reflect, to rekindle our hope, and to imagine a better future,” Tim Jones, Founder of Artscape.

We, the partners of this reparatory justice collective, agree with Jones’ sentiments above. We believe that the reparations and racial justice movements in Africa have severely underutilized the power of arts and culture in the ongoing campaign. For the past several years, the interactions between the arts and culture community and the traditional CSO/NGO community on the reparations campaign have been short-lived, haphazard, and piecemeal. The reparations discussions have been siloed and not adequately socialised. It is for this and other reasons that we are organizing the reparations festival titled WAKATI WETU: It’s Our Time - to resist, repair & reclaim.

This festival aims to re-ignite and facilitate the process of reimagining a repaired Africa. This involves bringing together African youth, activists, feminists, community activists, and climate justice advocates, as well as practitioners from global Africa to envision and build a future free of racial violence and rooted in black renaissance. It will be a space for collective imagination, strategic recalibration, and repairing the movements’ collective connections with the public alongside arts and culture.

The continent is awash with a plethora of advocates, policymakers, movement lawyers, artists, artivists, cultural chemists, content creators and curators, storytellers, and visionaries. Together, we intend to weave together a web of creativity that could produce a vibrant tapestry of society. However, the reparations movement on the continent has failed to delve into the profound impact that the intersections of traditional campaigning and art and culture could have on shaping our collective consciousness.

With the goal of making Africa the epicenter of demands for justice and reparations while strengthening alliances between the diaspora and the people of the continent, this festival will be organized in Nairobi.

It will be the start of a 10-year process, alongside the African Union’s (AU) Decade of Reparations. It is also an opportunity for the NGO community to utilize arts, culture, and innovation in the reparations campaign. It will serve as a dynamic platform to mobilize the public and ignite active engagement across all sectors of society in a powerful call for reimagining a future based on reparative justice, dignity, and equity.

There are many ways to bend the arc of justice toward the greater societal good. Festivals are one proven method—bringing social justice campaigns to life through creativity, storytelling, and public engagement. As part of the broader reparations campaign for Africans and people of African descent, this festival aims to spark social and behavioural change by engaging the wider public in compelling, accessible ways. This will be the harbinger of festivals for reparations. It will be followed by the reparations biennale, scheduled to be organized every two years during the decade of reparations in Africa.

The festival seeks to tap into the imaginative power of people, energize the movements, socialise the campaign, and offer a fresh, hopeful lens for reparatory justice demands. Through films, music, performances, open mics, exhibitions, workshops, and roundtables, the festival will foster collective learning, deliberative dialogue, and new partnerships—helping to broaden and deepen support for reparatory justice.

The reparations festival is also being organized for the following additional reasons. Firstly, to elevate African artivism and accelerate the expression black identity and heritage. Secondly, to build bridges and bridge the divides within the reparations movements. Thirdly, to foster communal healing and activists’ wellbeing. Additionally, the festival will serve as a space for fostering creativity and innovation for the reparations campaign.

Nairobi offers the ideal setting for the festival. It is a vibrant hub of African creativity, activism, and media, with a strong civil society and regional influence.

African Futures Lab has recently established its regional office in Nairobi. Baraza Media Lab (external link)has an influential reputation and strong networks in Nairobi. Both African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) (external link)and Reform Initiatives (external link) have partnerships and a presence in Kenya that will contribute to the successful convening of the event.

Importantly, hosting the festival in Nairobi strengthens our commitment to building movements across the continent—while reaching new audiences and anchoring the campaign in a key arts and cultural center.

It will be the first major event in East Africa by this group of organizations. 

The festival will demonstrate the power of edutainment (educational entertainment) for social change. The format will be a mixture of activities curated over two days (October 22-23). There will be a keynote address and a headline creative performance. There will also be a series of activities that will include the following:

Musical Performances: The festival will have live musical concerts each day of the event, showcasing one or more musicians from the continent or the diaspora. The musical performances will have themes centering repair, healing and call to action for reparations.

Roundtables & Workshops: the musical performances will be punctuated by moderated workshops on key topics such as (reparations and gender-based racial violence, reparations and climate justice, economic injustices, and the restitution of cultural assets. These moderated workshops will not exceed two sessions per day. They will also be conducted simultaneously, to allow participants to choose their preferred workshops, based on thematic interests.

Short Films and Documentary Screenings: There will be at least one documentary or short film screening per day, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker or producer. This could be done via a panel or a fireside chat format. Participating CSOs/NGOs and/or film producers will also be encouraged to screen their documentary or short films in their exhibition booths on a rolling basis.

Dance and/or Theater Performances: During the two days, the festival will curate theatre performances and short skits to serve as sources of inspiration for group or individual reflections, and to trigger discussions on themes and topics related to reparations, healing, climate justice, and economic justice.

Civil Society Exhibition Booths and Showcasing: Arts and Culture Fellows, civil society organizations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and other members of the creative community will have an opportunity to exhibit and showcase new works of art as well as those in progress, to participants in the festival. There will be booths and creative spaces for organizations working on reparations and healing to present their initiatives and potentially host mini events and undertake joint work.

Storytelling & Radical Imagination: A space to reimagine justice through powerful narratives and visionary creativity.

Fresco & Street Art Live Painting Performances: There will be opportunities for creativism to convey messages that provoke reactions and foster discussions.

Healing sessions: The festival will bring together African healers and cultural psychosocial chemists to conduct traditional forms of psychosocial and trauma-informed healing practices and sessions for participants over the two days of convening. Participants will also have the option to take self-care sessions for their healing and well-being during the festival.

At the end of the two-day festival, we hope to contribute to the following outcomes:

1. Increased public understanding and knowledge of what reparations mean, why we are demanding reparatory justice, and what action can be taken at the personal, community, national, and regional levels.
2. Increased number of CSOs engaged in the reparatory justice advocacy, including the recruitment of new CSOs that were not hitherto part of the continental movement. This will be done through values alignment and respectful partnerships.
3. Uplift artists and cultural workers to showcase their creativity and further community connections.
4. Increased coordination and collaboration between CSOs and creative content producers in Africa and the African diaspora in the furtherance of the reparatory justice agenda.
5. Produce and/or publicize arts and cultural pieces that speak to the collective visions of the festival attendees and the reparatory justice movements more broadly.
6. Festival manifesto for AU Decade of Reparations and guiding blueprint in the lead up to Reparations Indaba (biennale) in 2027. 

A coalition of five core organizations: African Futures Lab (AFaLab), Baraza Media Lab (BML), Deep South Solidarity Fund (DSSF), AU-ECOSOCC, and Reform Initiatives (RI) — is co-organizing this festival. This is part of the reparatory justice education pillar of our broader reparations campaign, aligned with the African Union’s 2025 Theme of the Year.

Each partner brings their complementary strengths, shared values, and commitment to advancing justice and equity for Africans and people of African descent:

• African Futures Lab (external link) works at the intersection of research, advocacy, and coalition building to advance justice and reparations for historical and contemporary racial injustices across Africa and Europe
• African Union ECOSOCC (external link)  connects grassroots and civil society actors to policymaking spaces within the African Union.
• Baraza Media Lab (BML) (external link)amplifies African narratives through media, storytelling, and creative innovation.
• Deep South Solidarity Fund (DSSF) (external link)grounds the work in diasporic solidarity, healing justice, and lived experience.
• Reform Initiatives (RI) (external link) drives civic and policy engagement to push institutional change at national and regional levels.

Together, this coalition reflects the intergenerational, cross-sectoral, and Pan-African nature of the reparations movement. The festival is designed not only to educate but to build solidarity, shift narratives, and galvanize action—goals that each of these organizations is uniquely positioned to support.

The reparations festival needs support from a range of individuals and institutions that work to achieve a world of dignity, equity, and rights. Investment in the arts and culture for social change is a safe bet for long-term, impactful intervention. It can have far-reaching social benefits by revitalizing community and creativity, fostering black identity and pride, and enhancing the advancement of a shared agenda.

Here are the various ways you can support the successful conduct of this festival:

1. Sponsor an artist or cultural educator: This opportunity is opened to philanthropic organizations or other institutions that run arts and cultural fellowships. The festival could be a space for these fellows to showcase work that is either ongoing or completed. It could also be a space for artistic collaborations. The sponsorship could be done directly or via AfaLab (Europe), Deep South Solidarity Fund (USA), Reform Initiatives (Ghana) and Baraza Media Lab (Kenya).
2. Purchase an exhibition space or booth: CSOs/NGOs and artists interested in showcasing their work at the festival can purchase a booth or an exhibition space for the duration of the festival. They will have access to educating 200+ people who would not otherwise have learned about their work. There are limited exhibition spaces and booths on offer. Each will be sold at $500 on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact AfaLab or Reform Initiatives for more information.
3. Procure a sponsorship package: this can go towards the payment for the venue, security guards, volunteers, food and beverages, etc. For more details on this, please contact AfaLab or Reform Initiatives.
4. Sponsor a civil society delegate: Philanthropic organizations or individuals can sponsor the flight, accommodation, and travel expenses of CSO delegates of their choice to attend the festival. Many CSOs are doing incredible work around reparations, restitution, and healing in different parts of the continent and the world, but may not have the resources to finance their attendance and participation. This could be an opportunity for donors to support their grantee-partners or organizations they interact with. Please contact AfaLab or Reform Initiatives for more details on this.
5. Attend the festival and help spread the word.