The Still I Rise International School operates in Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest informal settlements, home to hundreds of thousands of people, most of them under 25. Shortages of basic services, unemployment and limited access to quality education weigh especially heavily on young people here. Within the school, a dance club already introduces students to classical and contemporary dance.
Travel costs, bureaucratic procedures and sheer distance from international artistic circuits are what keep a professional residency out of reach for these students, whatever their ability.
The project
The project takes the dance work already underway at the school in Nairobi and turns it into a concrete international opportunity: an intensive eight-day artistic residency in Italy, alongside workshops and intercultural exchange, culminating in an original choreographic work created and performed by the students themselves.
The starting principle is simple: educational and artistic quality should not be a privilege. Built on equal opportunities, the valorisation of talent, active participation, intercultural dialogue and collaboration, the project treats students as the true protagonists of the creative process, not passive recipients of an experience designed elsewhere.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries are 15 students from the Still I Rise International School in Nairobi.
Its impact reaches further, to the wider student body, who benefit when participants return and share what they've learned, to the staff who accompany them, and to the audience of the final performance.
Project name: Still I Dance - Rising Together
Proposing organisation: Still I Rise A.P.S.
Area of intervention: Inclusion & Social Development
Country: Italy