This is to invite you all to participate in the launch and Research dissemination event on "Transforming Ugandan Folktales into Digital (Animation) Films for Educational and Leisure Purposes". The research is supported by the Government of Uganda, through the Makerere Research and Innovations Fund (RIF). The event is scheduled to take place on Thursday, 15th Ocotober 2020, starting at 9:00am in CTF1, Room 1.2 at Makerere University.
Project Team
1. Prof. Sr. Dominica Dipio (Principal Investigator)
2. Mr. Isaac Tibasiima
3. Dr. Susan Kiguli
4. Dr. Jimmy Spire Ssentongo
5.Archt. Richard Musinguzi
Guest of Honour: Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, Vice Chancellor, Makerere University
VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION
Please note that the event will largely be virtual. Only the project team and a few participants will attend physically.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://bit.ly/3df7HOa
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Project Summary
In this project, The research team collects and adapts Ugandan folktales into animation films for the educational and recreational purposes of children and the youth. In its first phase (year), the team produced four animation films, on topical issues, based on tales collected from different regions of Uganda. The folktales collected were creatively interpreted and animated to fiti nto the contemporary mentorship and recreational needs of, particularly, Ugandan youths. This research addresses the problem of paucity of cultural-based educational and recreational materials for young people. It premises that cultural artifacts are repositories of a community’s memory; and folktales are such expressions of a community’s shared values, that may be both culture-specific and cross-cultural. The research also addresses the problem of cultural over-dependency on foreign contents and identity crisis in the global context. Uganda needs to contribute its share of intangible cultural heritage – folktales, myths, legends, and traditional wisdoms – to expand the scope of global knowledge production and consumption.
The research brought together an interdisciplinary body of scholars and talents from the Schools of Languages, Literature and Communication; Liberal and Performing Arts and Film; and practising animators from the industry. Because the primary target is the youth, the research team envisaged involving the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCD), the culture sectors in the country such as the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (GLSD); and the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) as partners. The participants in the project, each and collectively, brought unique competencies as scriptwriters, illustratators, animatic designers, musicians, actors / actresses and artistic directors. The film format we have used makes Uganda’s cultural artefacts more portable and suitable for use in contemporary contexts. Using art to represent Uganda’s intagible heritage will inevitably open the the coutry further to the global community. At the national level, the selected folktales, drawn from diverse Ugandan ethnicities enhance a sense of our national identity and pride.
Project Objectives
- To generate cultural contents relevant for the educational and recreational needs of Ugandan youths; and through this to facilitate the implementation of the 70% Local Content of the Media Policy of Uganda through the production of quality media and cultural content
- To contribute towards Uganda’s creative and cultural industry, through production of artistic content that could be distributed beyond the country
- To interest and engage the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) in our pproducts for inclusion in the school curriculum
- To increase awareness among Ugandans about the relationship of arts with national and cultural identity
- To develop creative talents and to flag culture and as a capital that can be harnessed for economic development
- To publish scholarly articles on Uganda’s rich intagible cultural heritage
- To position Makerere University on the continent as a center of innovative research excellence and outputs.
See event flyer below
