16 practitioners from the music, animation and games design development sectors in Kenya have successfully graduated from GESCI’s 2014/2015 Creative Media Skills Course. The course had three areas of exploration – animation, mobile games/apps and music production/sound design. For three months, the practitioners, including four females, worked individually and collaboratively to produce a short animated film, a sound track and game based on the theme on ‘The Sound of the City’. The media industry in Kenya is now demanding up to 60% local content on all local TV stations. GESCI believes that the Creative Media Skills Course is an innovative approach to education, which has the potential to encourage building of industry-standard digital media and entrepreneurial skills and practitioners to satisfy this demand. “Some of the skills gained through the course are creativity & innovation and entrepreneurship, which are expected to accelerate the creation of small to medium enterprise start-ups in the digital creative media sector in Kenya and beyond”, said Elaine Hurt, AKE Programme Manager. Past AKE graduates are already making their mark in the industry. 2012/2013 games design graduate, James Mobutu, teamed up with two fellow students and formed GAME 254 company. The three created the Maasai Moran and was the best in the Games and Entertainment category in the Safaricom AppWizz challenge. The graduation, which was held on 6 February 2015, also included a showcase of the completed work by these 16 Kenyan practitioners. The event was streamed live to partners at Aalto University. Aalto University, through the Living Lab model has been conducting research on the AKE course to capture the emerging AKE technology-enhanced learning model that is linked to digital creative media industries. “Results from the research indicate that leadership, content, innovation and sustainability in the AKE course are relevant for strategically placing the participants to be future knowledge creators,” said Jerome Morissey, GESCI CEO. His sentiments are echoed by sound designer David Waweru from Kenya’s Stars in the Zoo company who was present at the graduation. “The skills I have seen here are immediately applicable at the workplace,” he said. “The course has been an eye-opening experience - the exposure to team work and collaboration was rewarding,” said animation graduate Dennis Mbuthia. The AKE programme is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland. Given a creative and digitally-enabled environment, this innovative course highlights what a group of talented young people can achieve in three months of skills development and team project work. Congratulations to all the graduates!