Apply for the Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab Program

Deadline: 1 September 2023

Applications are now open for the Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab, a 5 day film development program that aims at broadening the professional networks and producing expertise of participants through a series of hands-on workshops and one-on-one sessions with local and international industry mentors.

The residential program is designed to hone emerging producers’ creative instincts and evolve their communication and problem-solving skills at all stages of their next feature film project.

Key Developments Features:

Inclusion of West African producers created within the framework of the DEENTAL program, launched by the CNC with the financial collaboration of the European Union and the support of the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) States organization, in collaboration with DOCUBOX (Kenya), FOPICA (Senegal) and the Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab (Kenya).
An introduction to a documentary producers workshop that’s tailored towards producers with projects at the development stage in project partnership with Documentary Africa.

Vision and Mission

Vision: The Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab aim at bringing together producers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi & Rwanda.This program is meant to address some of the challenges that exist in our eco-system where the role of the creative producer is not well understood.
Mission: The Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab aim to increase the number of creative producers as well as their skills inorder to create greater opportunities and access to the global markets.

Producers Type

Fiction Producers: Sessions for these participants will focus on production & financing. Topics will include developing a project, how to put together a financing plan, best practices, advantages and disadvantages of co-production, standard documents required for applications to international funding, distribution and sales strategies, etc.
Documentary Producers: The program will launch into making the projects market ready for a global platform through a series of meetings that will cover the crucial aspects of the development process. This will feature sessions on story, market placement, financing and distribution approach, social and legal relations with the core teams & contributors. The sessions will feature both group and one on one sessions that will allow for project specific consultations that are tailored to the unique aspects of each project.

Who Can Apply

Fiction Producers:
- The Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab is open to any producer formally attached to a full-length, fiction feature film.
- Five (5) producers from East Africa (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) and 5 producers from West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo) will be selected to take part in this two-session program:
- First will be held in Nairobi from November 6th to 10th, 2023.
- Second in Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal the last week of April 2024.
Documentary Producers:
- The Great Lakes Creative Producer Lab is open to any producer formally attached to a documentary film. Applicants must own the IP rights to the project with which they apply and must have a director attached to the project.
- The call is open to producers from one of the following countries; Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.
- One producer per country will be selected for the Documentary Lab. The lab will be held in Nairobi from November 6th to 10th, 2023 in Nairobi.