Arts & Creative Sector

Arts & Creative Sector
Theme
Pillar	Citizen's Lives

Arts & Creative Sector is a theme of the Citizen's Lives pillar. It covers the coast's music, including taarab, its crafts such as woodcarving and boat building, film and digital content, festivals, and the money and venues that creative work depends on. The coast's heritage is internationally recognised: Lamu Old Town (inscribed 2001), the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests (2008) and Fort Jesus in Mombasa (2011) are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The 23rd Lamu Cultural Festival in November 2025 drew more than 20,000 visitors, cost the county KES 25 million, and was estimated by its organisers to have brought more than KES 400 million into the local economy.

What this page is for

This is the shared page for arts and creative work on the coast: please add the projects, organisations, data and stakeholder views you know about, so that everyone can read them side by side.

Arts & Creative Sector on the coast today

Festivals are the most visible part of the sector. The Lamu Cultural Festival, started in 2000 to promote tourism and Swahili heritage, features dhow and donkey races, and KES 10 million was set aside for prize-winners in 2025. In Kilifi, the Malindi District Cultural Association holds the Mekatilili wa Menza festival every August. Mombasa reports holding 36 community cultural festivals and training 600 cultural practitioners over its last plan period, against a target of 1,000, a shortfall it blames on public-health limits on gatherings.

Taarab, the sung Swahili poetry tradition, is still performed by Mombasa groups such as Lelele Africa, led by the Faza-born composer Mbarak Al-Haj, which represented Kenya at a Paris festival in 2023; he has said the genre has changed and that musicians "now prefer shortcuts", such as electronic keyboards.

Crafts remain a livelihood. Lamu's carved doors sell for KES 120,000 to KES 500,000 each and take up to two months to make; carvers still learn through apprenticeship. In 2021 the Kenya Maritime Authority counted fewer than 300 boat makers serving more than 5,000 boats in the Lamu archipelago, and worried that few young people were taking up the trade.

For contemporary work, Swahilipot Hub in Mombasa's Old Town combines technology and the arts; in 2022 the French embassy's Creative Arts Spaces in Kenya project equipped its amphitheatre with KES 3.3 million of sound and light equipment and funded a national tour for its artists.

Plans and policy

The national Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda pairs the creative economy with the digital superhighway as one of its five core pillars. Under the Fourth Medium Term Plan 2023-2027, the Talanta Hela programme is meant to nurture youth talent and streamline how royalties are collected and paid to artists, and a separate project promises film-production incentives, festivals, mentorships, an arts and crafts information portal and a National Creatives Economy Council.

In the county plans for 2023-2027, Mombasa names a lack of public cultural centres, artistic platforms and training in culture and the creative arts among the sector's problems, and lists cultural centres and support for practitioners among its opportunities. Lamu proposes talent and creative arts incubation centres at Bodhei, Kiunga, Witu and Kizingitini and a resource centre and theatre at Hindi. Regionally, the Kenya Film Commission has met the Jumuiya ya Kaunti za Pwani on using film for growth on the coast, and Tana River's governor committed to a film hub in the county.

Who is involved

Nationally, the Kenya Film Commission promotes the film industry and works with county blocs, the Kenya Copyright Board licenses the societies that collect music royalties, and the National Museums of Kenya has a curator in charge of Lamu. County culture departments and the six county governments run festivals and cultural programmes. Community bodies include the Malindi District Cultural Association and the Mijikenda Kaya elders. Creative spaces include Swahilipot Hub, and foreign partners such as the French embassy have funded venues. Related projects include Malindi Textiles and Fashion Incubation Centre, Swahili Heritage Design Code and Mombasa Old Town Rehabilitation; see also Tourism.

Open questions

Who owns the festivals? In 2019 the Lamu Cultural Promotion Group withdrew from the Lamu festival, accusing the county of disorganising the planning and rescheduling it without consultation; county officials said the date was moved to avoid a clash with Maulidi and denied wrongdoing. In Kilifi in 2026, the Malindi District Cultural Association said the Mekatilili festival is recognised in the county plan but receives no funding, and Kaya elders accused politicians of taking over the Chenda Chenda heroes' celebrations, which ran as two separate events; the county culture department could not be reached for comment.

Who collects musicians' royalties? In October 2025 the Kenya Copyright Board licensed two collecting societies and refused the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), citing missing audited accounts and returns; a tribunal then barred MCSK from collecting, while MCSK argued the board had erred. How the dispute has affected coastal artists' incomes is not yet documented here.

What does it cost to film on the coast? Mombasa filmmakers working on a draft county film policy said in 2022 that they needed licences from several offices and paid fees "as if they are foreigners"; Governor Abdulswamad Nassir, then campaigning, promised to scrap the charges and start a Mombasa film festival. Whether that policy was adopted was not found.

Can the old crafts find successors? Lamu boat builders told The Star in 2021 that their trade lacked government funding and support, while the Kenya Maritime Authority said it would train young people under skilled craftsmen.

Coverage the plan expects

• Swahili music and taarab
• crafts and artisans
• film and digital content
• festivals such as the Lamu Cultural Festival
• funding and venues for creative work
• music royalties and copyright

Projects

Swahili Heritage Design Code

A project page joins this theme by naming it as the theme in its infobox. To start one:

Sources

• Culture, fun and millions: The pomp and colour at Lamu Festival, Daily Nation, 2025
• Mombasa County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027, County Government of Mombasa, 2023
• Lamu County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027, County Government of Lamu, 2023
• Fourth Medium Term Plan 2023-2027, Government of Kenya, 2024
• Stakeholder Engagement with Jumuiya ya Kaunti za Pwani, Kenya Film Commission, undated
• Sharp divisions cloud Chenda Chenda celebrations, Kenya News Agency, 2026
• The 'talking' doors of Lamu that cost up to Sh500,000, Daily Nation, 2025
• Lamu Old Town, UNESCO World Heritage Centre