The Producer Hub, a connective resource for independent producers, artists, and arts workers, has teamed up with Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (The Lab) to create The Bridges Fellowship, a two-year fellowship program centered around training African producers.

Led by Kenyan Producer Karishma Bhagani, the program will use a uniquely crafted African and Afro-diasporic pedagogy, focused on humanizing producing in cultural infrastructure building. Ten Fellows of African descent (from the African continent and the African diaspora) have been selected for the inaugural class. Fellows will engage in a series of creative discussions and workshop sessions, culminating in a three-week residency with a participating arts or producing organization in the U.S., U.K., or on the African continent. 

The inaugural cohort of Fellows includes Wanjiru ‘Ciru’ Njoroge (Kenya), Tricia Arthur-Stubbs (United Kingdom), Eulalia Ikawinyit Okello (Kenya), Martina Ayoro (Kenya), Chadota Idda (Kenya), José-Arthur Ndong (Benin), Yassmin Abdalazeim (Sudan and Egypt), Diya Vaya (Kenya), Vanessa Iriza (Rwanda), and Cathrine Douglas (Zimbabwe).

The participating arts organizations that will partner with the Fellows includes the National Arts Festival (South Africa), Tebere Arts Foundation (Uganda), Jukwaa Arts Productions (Kenya), ArtsEmerson (United States), Bradford Producing Hub (United Kingdom), and more to be announced. Alongside Bhagani as program director, the Fellowship is led by program development lead Nwabisa Plaatjie and program manager Rosette Nteyafas.

“The Bridges Fellowship stemmed from a frustration with seeing repetitive and mundane representations of African stories on world stages, and from a deep desire to have Africans see their own work across the continent. Growing up in Kenya, I knew that there is not a shortage of excellent, world-class artistic work coming out of the African continent that offered a diverse, complex, and nuanced depiction of what it means to be African today,” says Bhagani in a statement. “I am incredibly excited at the brilliance of the first cohort of fellows. Each of them has a distinctive producing practice that is born out of their own encounters with artmaking on the African continent, and they boast a range of skills from film and theatre producing, dance, writing, and arts management. To me, this group represents the kind of artmaking we need to aspire to: the kind that can speak to different audiences and transcend genres.”

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