A young creative professional
Creative Industries

Skills for Creative Industry Support Services

Communicating through arts is a great way of communicating between cultures. Our Skills for the Creative Industry Support Services project, part funded by the European Union, works with partners across Tanzania to deliver training and capacity building in the creative industries. It is delivered in partnership with Alliance Francaise in Arusha and Nafasi Artspace in Dar es Salaam and is running from April 2013 to 2015.

What our Creative Industries project will do 

  • Provide training for 300 support service workers in fields such as sound, lighting, curating, management, IT and social media to improve their job prospects and the living standards of them and their families.
  • Provide English and French language training to enable them to interact better with artists from across Africa and improve the standard of creative productions in Tanzania.
  • Establish a web portal for creative industry organisations across Tanzania to share best practice and provide access to jobs and training opportunities.

Our track record in developing the creative sector in Tanzania 

Our Skills for Creative Industry Support Services is a new addition to a long-term strategy to develop the capacities of the creative sector in Tanzania.

  • The Words and Pictures (WaPi) project (2006–2008) comprised a series of youth-oriented live events reaching around 1.2 million young people in the region. Its aim was to encourage and inspire large numbers of young people in the cultural arena and provide a platform for their free expression through cultural means.
  • The Creative Lives project (2008–2010) was a series of in-country creative industries training events for young people. It reached around 350,000 people and offered a more structured approach to training the most talented/dedicated of artists, identified through WaPi.
  • The Young African Creative Entrepreneur Programme (2009–2010) provided a further programme of training for excellence for the best creative individuals. It also supports a strengthening of cultural skills and networks in the region.

The Skills for Creative Industry Support Services project will support the economic growth of the creative industries by training and developing practitioners in support services for the industry, which will impact directly on the individuals themselves and also expand the talent pool available to the many organisations who use these skills.

See also