JANUARY 2021

posted in: EDITORIAL

January Editorial

Welcome to our first monthly editorial for the new Beneath The Baobabs website! 2020 was a rollercoaster ride that has called for us to slow down and visualize an exciting future full of opportunities for cultural development in Kilifi, Kenya.

Our amazing team at Beneath The Baobabs have had a tough 2020, with the disappointment of no major festival, no income to speak of and constantly shifting goalposts to deal with. However, hard work and reflection have allowed us to prevent Covid from smothering our efforts, as we create new concepts to support our community throughout the year. 2021 is shaping up to be much more than one event!

We can’t wait to be able to produce our much loved ‘Beneath The Baobabs Festival’ (formerly Kilifi New Year Festival). However, 3 days a year simply wasn’t enough to achieve our mission of being a truly transformative ‘Safe Space’. So we’ve decided to open up the site to smaller, more regular and partner events. In this way we hope to build new experiences, retreats, workshops, events and opportunities, keeping us closer to our audiences, on mission and open to new ideas. Bringing our space, team and experience to the wider creative communities, opening up rather than closing in.

The Team is excited to see what this new collaborative and open model brings, how it will make us stronger and how it will reinforce our mission to support the creative and counterculture scenes in Kenya. When the time comes, we will be able to produce major events that better meet the needs of each of our partners and participants, whilst we successfully bring together the subcultures of East Africa.

We hope you find our new website useful and can’t wait to see you at Beneath The Baobabs soon!

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Matt Swallow, Creative Director