Welcome to our new news page where will be posting updates about events, appreciations, and projects.

LATEST NEWS -We have some great news in that our sister organization, One Fine Day, through support from GIZ Germany, have funded a new arts centre in the heart of Kibera. It is being run by our affiliate CBO, Anno’s One Fine Day and opened officially on January 31st. This marvellous space will enable many more children and young adults to take advantage of the safe environment and the extra classes and materials we can provide. We are currently recruiting children from the neighbouring Olympic primary school to add to our students from KAG School where we have around 500 children who have been participating every Monday afternoon in classes that have been running for ten years. Now that the centre is up and running we will hold many more classes there including workshops at the weekends and through the school holiday. We are also introducing classes for school leavers and young adults from which group we hope to enlist classroom assistants to help run the new programmes we are starting. Our team of 14 Kenyans will teach the usual disciplines but with the addition of aerial circus skills, now that we have a safe rig for the children to learn on.

We have also started up a wind and percussion orchestra and have been very lucky in that Ghislain Hervet - a well-known clarinettist and recently retired professor at the Montpellier conservatoire in France, came out for three weeksin January to start this project, teaching 4 children and our music teacher Gideon to play the clarinet. .He brought 6 donated instruments for the children to learn on and have also have been given a saxophone and flute as well as two horns donated by Ghislain. He will continue with Zoom classes until he can come again to Kibera and meanwhile we are enlisting the help of local saxophone and flute teacher to keep the orchestra growing.

The other project we are working on is a new musical which will be performed in Swahili with a cast including the teachers and the children. It had been created by the Anno’s One Fine Day team with help of various professionals from the UK and France. The music is being composed by our M.D., music teacher Melissa and the show directed by English/French actress and director, Patty Hannock, alongside kenyan director of AOFD, Krysteen Savane and drama teachers Kades and Beth. The dance and fight sequences will be choreographed by our Kenyan dance teachers, Melvin, Consolata and Artullo -with the addition of the circus teachers Irush, Samuel and Kevin. The ballet section will be supervised by our head of dance, Anna Nygh via zoom - and with the input from a visiting ballet teacher from London (tbc) and our ballet teacher Melvin. Costumes and sets will be created by Bee and the art department, headed by Ambiyo.

This programme run by Anno’s One Fine Day is being funded with the help of our French partners Anno’s Arts, Anno’s Africa and One Fine Day and will premiere at the Alliance Française just before Christmas.

This is the first post in our brand new “news page” , where you’ll be able to see updates on all our events and projects, and our thanks and appreciation to all those who support us.

Our wonderful Kenyan Director Krysteen was interviewed by Virginia Lensi of Let’s Talk, DANCE about the Anno’s Africa programme run by Anno’s One Fine Day. To watch their great discussion, click here.

We are very excited to say that in January we are linking with What Dance Can Do - a Zurich based non profit organization. They are bringing two of their “Ambassadors” , — principal dancers from the Paris Opera - to teach our ballet kids in Kibera for ten days. They will work intensively with our advanced students each day and also hold classed at KAG school for all of the ballet and contemporary dance children after school every day.

This is the beginning of a wonderful new partnership and in July Anno’s Africa and What Dance Can Do will combine forces with the dancers who came out last year, for a second fund raising Gala in Nairobi with a group made up of dancers from Paris, Montreal, Zurich, Sweden and the UK. Proceeds from the Gala will go towards holiday programmes for the children and equipment for our new Arts Centre in Kibera.

Our other visitor to Nairobi in January will be our fabulous Trustee Hayley Mills who is coming to meet the children and to teach “acting for film and T/V” to the drama and creative writing classes. . We will show her first, iconic film TIGER BAY to the children and their teachers as well as some of her other films. Andrew Birkin will make a documentary about Hayley’s visit - her first time back in Kenya since making The Flame Trees of Thika there some 30 years ago.

We would like to thank Mark Lewis and the Fair Trader co-operative in Holmfirth for the wonderful donation of three guitars for our music students in Kenya and Malawi. Also Mark has taken some of our children’s framed pictures for sale in the shop - for the which we are very grateful..

We also want to thank the CART organization in Holmfirth who will be shipping some books to Malawi for our children in our Mzuzu and Nkhata Bay programmes.

Buyer/manager Sarah with Bee and Mark.

And another HUGE thank you to Helen and Peter Gray for the wonderful donation of a car load of brand new ballet clothes that will keep our children sorted for many years to come!! A wonderful gift — and we are so very grateful.