Dancers perform at a Kibera Creative Arts event in Kibera. Photo: Kibera Creative Arts
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Kibera Creative Arts: the Mashimoni studio behind Stivo Simple Boy and Mammito.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects' own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Kibera Creative Arts, which calls itself KiCA, is a community organisation in Mashimoni. It runs after-school classes in music, dance, poetry, painting, acting and comedy, and it gives young performers somewhere to rehearse and record. Its production arm, Made in Kibera, handles audio and video.
The group traces its roots to a 2006 youth group. Director and co-founder Geoffrey Oyoo was born in Kibera and still lives there; he is also the record executive at Made in Kibera and manages rapper Stivo Simple Boy. "Art is a way out of poverty," he wrote in 2022.
A studio built on crowdfunding
The studio began with two small online campaigns. In 2015 the Spanish NGO Más Por Ellos and a Kibera youth group raised 1,515 euros on Verkami to record a reggae song and video and stage a free festival in Kibera. In May 2016 a Kickstarter called Made in Kibera Studio raised 4,658 euros from 300 backers to build what it described as the first professional recording studio in Kibera. By May 2017 the studio was running, with the Spanish NGO Kubuka as its partner. A Spanish documentary about the collective, Kibera Sauti, premiered at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 2018.
The hits
Stivo Simple Boy's Vijana Tuache Mihadarati, the song that made him a national name, was recorded at Made in Kibera around 2016 and had passed a million YouTube views by 2022. Comedian Mammito's early career also went through KiCA, and she says she mentors girls there. KiCA says it has worked with more than 2,500 artists and community members.
Murals and a new centre
In 2024 the French muralist Seth and the New York photographer Martha Cooper spent a week in Kibera painting the facade of KiCA's community centre and a "We Are One" wall beside a football field. A GoFundMe campaign to build a Kibera Creative Arts Center, launched in August 2023, had raised 28,609 euros of a 50,000 euro goal and completed the land-purchase stage. KiCA also hosts a walking tour on Airbnb that ends with a drumming or dance class at the new building.
Sources: People Daily, 19 Sep 2019; The Star, 19 Jul 2019; Brooklyn Street Art, 11 Apr 2024; Salzburg Global Seminar; Kickstarter, 2016; Verkami, 2015; Kubuka, 16 May 2017; Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, 2018; LEA, 31 Aug 2022; GoFundMe; KiCA.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects’ own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Kibera Creative Arts, which calls itself KiCA, is a community organisation in Mashimoni. It runs after-school classes in music, dance, poetry, painting, acting and comedy, and it gives young performers somewhere to rehearse and record. Its production arm, Made in Kibera, handles audio and video.
The group traces its roots to a 2006 youth group. Director and co-founder Geoffrey Oyoo was born in Kibera and still lives there; he is also the record executive at Made in Kibera and manages rapper Stivo Simple Boy. “Art is a way out of poverty,” he wrote in 2022.
A studio built on crowdfunding
The studio began with two small online campaigns. In 2015 the Spanish NGO Más Por Ellos and a Kibera youth group raised 1,515 euros on Verkami to record a reggae song and video and stage a free festival in Kibera. In May 2016 a Kickstarter called Made in Kibera Studio raised 4,658 euros from 300 backers to build what it described as the first professional recording studio in Kibera. By May 2017 the studio was running, with the Spanish NGO Kubuka as its partner. A Spanish documentary about the collective, Kibera Sauti, premiered at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 2018.
The hits
Stivo Simple Boy’s Vijana Tuache Mihadarati, the song that made him a national name, was recorded at Made in Kibera around 2016 and had passed a million YouTube views by 2022. Comedian Mammito’s early career also went through KiCA, and she says she mentors girls there. KiCA says it has worked with more than 2,500 artists and community members.
Murals and a new centre
In 2024 the French muralist Seth and the New York photographer Martha Cooper spent a week in Kibera painting the facade of KiCA’s community centre and a “We Are One” wall beside a football field. A GoFundMe campaign to build a Kibera Creative Arts Center, launched in August 2023, had raised 28,609 euros of a 50,000 euro goal and completed the land-purchase stage. KiCA also hosts a walking tour on Airbnb that ends with a drumming or dance class at the new building.
KNN Newsroom is the staff byline for stories written, rewritten and edited at the Kibra News Network desk. Where a story credits an outside outlet, the original source is linked at the foot of the piece.
