In Conversation with Return to Kibra

"The work has become more of educating people on the importance of co-authoring and owning their story and not just point and shoot anymore."

Return to Kibra is a community and youth-led arts and advocacy organisation working at the intersection of restorative history, research and participatory media. Rooted in community, their work challenges dominant narratives about Kibra by centring lived experience, dignity and truth — using storytelling as a tool for repair rather than extraction. Through archival practice, co-authored narratives and deep care for process, Return to Kibra reminds us that Kibra is a place of origins, resilience and possibility, not deficit. We were keen to learn more about how they hold care, accountability and storytelling at the heart of their work, and they were generous enough to share their reflections with us.

How would you describe the kind of care or change your work brings?

At the forefront of all of this, we know that we are not far away from becoming a statistic of what we are working to repair, being a youth led arts and advocacy organization, we constantly ask ourselves is this how we want our story defined, With partial truths or with shared humanity and dignity? Over the years our work has asked us to question our privileges while trying to show how it has always been told? We believe that every voice has a value and we try to present the beauty in the everyday reality and lived experiences of our community.

Who has poured into you or shaped how you show up for your community?

Kibera day care centre for the elderly has been the thread that holds us together, reminding us that our life's history shapes our future. Every interaction with them is a reflection, a lesson or a reminder of why we do what we do. Their resilience to still have the will to pour back to themselves even when they shouldn't, is one of the reasons why we believe that the voices of our community sit at the kitchen counter and our resilience, innovation and well-being motivates us to go again and again. 

What’s one thing people don’t always see about what you do?

The camera is not a very friendly tool inside this community, its because our voice has always been incentivized or our story tokenized, our organization started by a native documentary photographer and researcher, who has always used it as an advocacy tool, faces similar or more challenges as any other person walking into marginalized or underrepresented communities, we get told no enough times, we are asked to pay because so and so came last time did an interview that they paid for, while we believe in compensation, this always leaves us with the work of translation and being held accountable for work we are not part of, to explain where this interview goes to and who its going to benefit. The work has become more of educating people on the importance of co-authoring and owning their story and not just point and shoot anymore.

How do you centre care within your work?  

We try to remind ourselves that slow movement is still movement, while we care so much about what we do, we try not to get caught up so much in the sauce, its little reminders like having sticky notes of the mission and always going back to it, that nothing for us without us, others activity like empathy mapping allows us to extend grace both to us and our community partners.