Traditional Blacksmith in Konso Hurri Hills | Northern Kenya
Channel: InsightShare
Date: 2019-03-12

Blacksmith is a multi-disciplinary craft based on the traditional core skills of forging, forming, cutting and joining hot metal. In this film, members from the Konso community in Northern Kenya take us to a field trip in the Hurri Hills to show different styles of forged metalwork using traditional blacksmithing techniques and jointing methods.

The Huri Hills is a remote mountainous region located between the Chalbi Desert and the Kenyan-Ethiopian border. Participatory video provides these experienced craftsmen with a community development approach to document traditional knowledge that they value and wish to pass on to future generations, such as traditional blacksmith. 

This film is part of the “Northern Kenya Indigenous Video Collective: NENO, The Message” playlist. This playlist features 11 participatory videos produced between 2016 and 2019 in a joint project between InsightShare, The Christensen Fund, The Kivulini Trust and The Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The project aimed to connect indigenous communities across Northern Kenya and provide them with skills and resources to document their way of life through participatory video. 

These participatory videos filmed by the trainees themselves show events and practices that are important for the community, like cultural festivals and endangered ceremonies. They also used participatory video to tackle pressing challenges and find collective solutions.

Northern Kenya has until recently remain isolated from the rest of the country, but now it is seeing development moving in at a rapid pace. This modernisation is a serious threat to the ancient ways of living and the traditional value systems that a living culture is rooted in. Most ethnic groups in Northern Kenya still have a traditional lifestyle, and oral tradition is the way of passing forward traditional knowledge.

InsightShare’s Living Cultures initiative supports Indigenous Peoples to protect their territories, languages and cultures using Participatory Video. Living Cultures is a growing movement across Asia, Africa and the Americas uniting indigenous communities across borders; to celebrate, foster and protect their cultures with the principle of self-determination at its very heart. 

Find out more about InsightShare’s Living Cultures initiative here: https://insightshare.org/network/ 

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