Featured Organization
Arterial Network
Arterial Network is a non-profit civil society network of artists, organizations and cultural practitioners engaged in building sustainable networks, information dissemination, training, policy formulation, advocacy, research and African-centered theory, all geared towards growing and strengthening the cultural and creative sectors in Africa, and making a contribution to democracy, human rights and development on this continent. Arterial Network is currently represented in 17 countries.
Arterial Network was born, in 2007, from strong convictions, expressed by several cultural actors and African civil society, that putting culture at the heart of public policies is the sine qua non condition for a fair and perennial development of the African continent. Its five core focus areas to support the arts are advocacy (through the Artwatch Africa project), capacity building, market access, knowledge management and information dissemination. At its founding, delegates from 14 African nations cited the African cultural sector these was severely lacking in these five areas.
“Our role is to support each other in order to effectively defend and support the universal growth of the creative industries,” Mamou Daffe, President of the Arterial Network (2015-2017), said in an interview.
Some of the network’s achievements include the publication of Adapting the Wheel, a best practice handbook on the development of cultural policy, the Artwatch Africa Project, an initiative to monitor, advocate, and defend artists rights especially freedom of artistic expression in Africa, and has been involved in the Culture Post2015 Campaign, which spread the organization's mission and goals.
By Shahrooz Nasir, September 2017.