Afrika Yetu’s Arts-In-Education programs aim to:

Educate and promote diversity, cultural awareness and understanding through the presentation of African arts. Student participants will broaden their view of the world by communicating with artists, musicians, instructors and other students from different countries. Instill and increase a sense of creativity in student participants. Give learners of all ages and backgrounds an understanding of African arts and culture. Students throughout the United States and abroad participate in our cultural school programs. These students come from various socioeconomic backgrounds and races, and include all age groups, from pre-school to senior citizens.

Our educational programs focus on four areas:

• Humanities and Educational Programs

• Cultural Exchange Programs

• Community Outreach Programs

• Mainstage Performances

Afrika Yetu’s Arts-In-Education programs provide the social, cultural, and recreational programs and activities coordinated each semester with various arts and social organizations.

This is to enable a student-centered approach, which emphasizes the individual needs of students, educational programming and appreciation and respect for diversity and global awareness. Each student will, at least, have had an opportunity to both discover a culture other than his/her own, and to rethink any assumptions or biases about that culture.

Safari: Living Art Residencies

Safari is a Swahili word, meaning "journey".

The African never separates art from life. Song and dance, music and storytelling pulse within each man, woman and child of the continent. Over tens of thousands of years they have carried art to every corner of the globe; that art still dwells within all of Africa’s children – each of us.

The Safari Educational Program aims to bring that art out from within each child. Using lessons on the arts and culture of today’s Africa, Safari will help children recognize the connection they share with that continent, and each other.

Project description
Africa has a very rich heritage, shaped by countless past generations. Although similarities exist throughout the continent, there are also myriad differences amongst its people and its regions.  The forefathers passed their heritage on to various ethnic groups throughout the world.  The Safari Educational program traverses this history of African tradition and culture.

To communicate culture in Africa, one uses a variety of forms: music, singing, dancing, storytelling, mask, costume and instrument making, to name a few. Safari will explore these media in depth, directly involving the students in each lesson.

The Safari: Living Art residency program (available for any time frame, from one day to 10 weeks) contains multiple components:

• Instruments, Song and Dance

• Art and Costuming

• Storytellers

• Contemporary African Culture and Organization

• Ancient African Languages

• Presentation (student performance)