Sikka is a platform whose entire purpose is to document, with an essence of archiving, memorable, iconic moments and events that have truly shaped the feel of the Sudanese revolution.
Currently funded by the Goethe Institute, it is currently the only archiving platform that tells a positive story of the revolution through arts and culture interventions. It started its archiving activities toward the end of the revolution, and continues the ongoing story of beauty through the war time struggles of the Sudanese community and its diasporas.
On the 13, 14, 15 October, Belle and Co. had the privilege of working with the Sikka team to identify ways in which the project could become more sustainable in the future. Utilising the Arterial Network Arts Fundraising toolkit, the workshop covered topics such as understanding where Sikka fits in the Arts Continuum, Analysing the Arts Fundraising environment, Run through the basics of Proposal Writing as well as develop some key Fundraising Strategies for 2024 and beyond.
The workshop concluded with homework for the entire team to source fundraising opportunities within their own network and to work together to co-create future streams of income.
As part of the EU Erasmus Plus Programme called “Ground Up: Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Resilient Cities”, Belle and Co. designed and delivered a 1 hour local workshop for Social Enterprises in South Africa. The response was overwhelming with 50 RSVPs streaming in, curious to know more about the project,
The project outcome: A set of indicators to measure the health of the Social Enterprise Ecosystem. Number of partners countries involved: 11 Partners (North Macedonia, Costa Rica, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, Ecuador, Serbia and Peru) Number of months: 18 month project (Jan 2022 – until July 2023)
A project of this nature is inherently tricky, as it is trying to capture a set of mainly quantitative indicators to measure how well supported the Social Enterprise Ecosystem is in a given local (city, region, nation).
The 4 pillars the project focused on include:
Human Capital
Funding and Finance
Support Systems
Quality of Life
The local workshop, held on the 14 April 2023, was to showcase the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Assessment Tool that the SA team had developed so far and the data sources they had managed to find. It was also an opportunity for the ecosystem themselves to validate or dispute the tool and its sources.
WORKSHOP VIDEO
If you missed this session, you can view the whole workshop video here:
For the fourth year in a row, Belle and Co was asked to design and deliver a design-thinking workshop for Lifechoice’s Coding Academy students. This time, the ask was to design a competitive Hackathon-style training, focused on a specific theme, identified by the Academy as essential for learners: Financial Literacy.
What is a hackathon?
The word hackathon is a portmanteau of the words “hacker”, which means “clever programmer”, and “marathon”, an event marked by endurance. The concept of the hackathon, also called a hack day or hack fest, was born out of the open source (tech) community who would come together for about 24 hours to develop new software and applications. Nowadays it is used as a design-thinking methodology for all sorts of communities not only in tech.
Why does creativity thrive under constraints?
A study on creativity and constraint demonstrates that surprisingly when options are limited, people generate more, rather than less, varied solutions. When faced with scarcity, research shows that people must give themselves the freedom to use resources in less conventional ways. (Forbes.com)
Thus, the hackathon concept is a great way to simulate a time-constrained environment driven by either competition or collaboration to creatively solve problems through innovative or lateral thinking.
Lifechoices Hackathon method
For Lifechoices, we have chosen the competition-based hackathon, whereby teams are encouraged to come up with viable tech-based solutions to an aspect of the problem of Financial Literacy, using their coding knowledge, additional research and their inherent group ingenuity. The winning team receives a prize and recognition of some sort in front of an audience.
Learning objectives are to:
Stimulate creativity, innovation and solution-based thinking;
Learn how to work as a team and come up with tech-based products or services;
Understand more deeply certain aspects of Financial Literacy;
Embrace the VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world by enhancing capacities for creative problem-solving.
Practise building a tech-based solution and pitching in front of an audience.
A hackathon can be conducted in a variety of ways, using a number of activities or design-thinking methods including brainstorming, world cafe, bar camp, pitches.
All the teams were excellent, designing prototypes (some on paper, others coded and already working MVPs) focusing on the following Financial Literacy topics: Budget, Debt, Credit Score, and Savings.
In January 2021, the British Council, appointed Belle and Co. and its supplier consortium (Made Culture, Nigeria and Heva Fund, Kenya), supported by UK partner University of Arts London, to expand its digital programme delivery and to this end, commissioned a suite of e-learning courses, to support young people in the development of their knowledge in creative entrepreneurship.
Over the next 4 months, Belle and Co. and its consortium, were in charge of developing:
Module 1: Launching your Creative Enterprise
Module 2: Growing your Creative Enterprise
A further Module 3 on Impact Entrepreneurship and Module 4 on Creative Economy Policy, were designed by another service provider.
Module 1: Launching your Creative Enterprise
This entry-level module consists of 5 courses comprising of a total of 50-60 lessons. Each course should take the learner 2,5 hours to complete. Which means, Module 1 should take around 12 hours to complete.
Module 2: Growing your Creative Enterprise
This intermediate level module consists of 7 courses comprising a total of around 70-80 lessons. Each course should take the learner 2,5 hours to complete. Which means, Module 2 should take around 17 hours to complete.
A mixed media approach was used including video case studies, interviews, PDFs, PPTs, Worksheets, and Quizzes.
Click through the carousel to see what the courses look like online:
Each Course starts with a welcome video by the Course facilitator. In this case, Malaika Toyo (Made Culture), is introducing Module 1: Course 3 on Marketing and Branding.
A variety of Video Case Studies were produced from across the continent. Pictured here is an entrepreneur from Egypt, and an Entrepreneur from Rwanda.
Some Video case studies take the form of an interview. Pictured here is an Entrepreneur from South Africa being interviewed by one of our facilitators.
Workshop Activity #3 // Dive 3 “Zero to One > 1 to N”
Music Crossroads International runs a Creative Campus annually in Africa that enables local Music Crossroads Academies across Africa (namely Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe) to focus on a number of modules including: train-the-trainer of music teachers on curriculum development, audio-engineering training including live music training, instrument building and repair, as well as cultural management training for musicians, students and managers of the various academies.
Belle and Co, was tasked to co-facilitate the 10-day Cultural Management training component of the Creative Campus, and within this devised a 5-day Cultural Entrepreneurship module focusing on social enterprise development and business modelling using various design-thinking techniques and tools.Teams within the workshop came up with various solutions to some of the challenges faced by Academies which includes : Decreasing donor dependency, mitigation of drop out rates at Academies, influencing the accreditation process at a governmental level as well as the challenge of shifting mindsets when it comes to the value of music in the community. All of these activities, projects and solutions were framed within a social enterprise mindset, ensuring that there is a balance between profit and purpose, money and meaning!
The module was developed based on Belle and Co.’s years of work in the creative and cultural industries, including international exposure garnered through the Erasmus+ supported programme called “Dive in Social Entrepreneurship programme” which has been running for the last 2 years with over 12 countries.
On 27 February 2019, a programme funded by the Department of Arts and Culture and co-hosted by the Craft Design Institute and Social Enterprise Academy focused on cross-sectoral capacity development of local and governmental facilitators within the creative social enterprise space.
The training took place in Langa Township at the Guga S’thebe Cultural Centre.
Day 1, led by the Social Enterprise Academy tutors (Belinda Guillot and Belisa Rodrigues), took the participants through the Academy’s “Intro to Leadership” module as well as through its unique learning methodology of peer-led exchange.
The participants evaluated the session, and an overwhelming majority stated that the tools, methods and learning-led approach helped them understand the content better, and to apply it in their own contexts, and that they were also better equipped to help others to learn.
The programme extends over 7 days:
Day 1: Intro to Leadership (SEA)
Day 2: Business Assessment and Business Vision (CDI)
Day 3: Business Basics (CDI)
Day 4: Creativity in Business (CDI)
Day 5: Social Enterprise and other forms of business (SEA)
