Using Prospero to combat COVID-19 in Korogocho, Nairobi

Peter Mwashi Litonde leading a workshop in Korogocho.

Korogocho is a place with more than its fair share of challenges. The ‘informal settlement,’ a slum district of Nairobi, is home to over 150,000 people living in terrible conditions: overcrowding, poor sanitation, disease, high levels of violence, domestic and child abuse, alongside low standards of education and a lack of fresh water.

C&T, the applied theatre and technology company, has worked in partnership with several community projects and social justice groups in Korogocho for a decade. For the last eighteen months C&T have employed local community and theatre worker Peter Mwashi Litonde. Pete leads projects in Korogocho’s schools and enables them to participate in C&T’s Network Theatre Collaborations, linking schools around the world through drama and technology. However, by March it was becoming increasingly clear that with the rise of Coronavirus in China, Europe and the USA, this pattern of work was unlikely to be sustainable and that the virus itself posed a whole new challenge that needed to be addressed.

Whilst at this point the virus had no foothold in Kenya, it was clear once it did take hold, it posed a very real threat to the people of Korogocho. Peter and C&T decided that their best efforts were directed to creating public health information through drama workshops and our online distance learning platform, Prospero.

Prospero allows anyone to build interactive drama workshops and share them digitally. It builds on the pedagogies and techniques of educational drama and applied theatre to make web-based learning experiences that can reach potentially large numbers of participants. In 2019 Prospero was named ‘Global Education Innovation’ by the Helsinki educational think tank HundrED.

Whilst Prospero is extensively used in schools, colleges and universities, supported by sophisticated IT systems, interactive whiteboards and Virtual Learning Environments, it is an immensely flexible system. From its original conception, C&T always wanted Prospero to work in parts of the world without the wealth and advantages of the developed world, enabling the company to build truly global collaborations. That’s why Prospero works entirely through web browsers, with no need for apps or specialist software. As a consequence, based on first-hand experience from Korogocho, the company decided to build its COVID-19 resources entirely for use on smartphones.

Evidence suggests that despite the extremes of poverty, just about everyone in Korogocho has access to a smartphone either directly or through family and friends. Making drama resources for this simple, ubiquitous technology would mean Prospero could help the maximum number of people. The resources would be simple and direct: songs and games that anyone could learn and play and that teach everyone the important lessons about to how to limit the spread of the virus: wash you hands, don’t shake hands, stay at home. In Korogocho these are not easy rules to follow, underlying the need to reinforce these messages.

Peter worked quickly: before social distancing measures were introduced, he led workshops on the streets with local children and families, making videos for use in Prospero. Songs that were already popular with children in Koro were repurposed with alternative lyrics to help reinforce hygiene messages. Simple drama games were adapted to help children find playful ways of greeting each other safely. Some of these were then staged as short, simple scenes in locations around the slum , modelling safe behaviours for residents to follow.

As soon as curfews were introduced Peter shifted to working online, using his Prospero Producer account to build ‘Smartscripts’, the interactive drama workshops anyone can create and share in Prospero. He integrated his self-made videos and media with simple instructions and guidance that would guide even those with no previous experience of drama through these sets of participatory tasks and activities. Four versions of these smartscripts were developed - two for children, two for families; two in English, two in Swahili - helping to ensure these interactive materials could reach the widest possible audience.

Next, Peter used the extensive network of community and social justice groups in Korogocho to deploy and distribute these resources. Prospero integrates easily with existing social media platforms - Whats App, Facebook, Twitter, etc - making the process of sharing simple, and access for all, easy. These resources are now live and being extensively shared, just as COVID-19 cases begin to rise in Kenya. We are hoping Prospero can make a small difference to the people of Korogocho in these difficult times.

Now, we are looking ahead. Peter and C&T are starting to build further smartscripts to maintain momentum and try to keep people safe, through drama and technology. We plan on updating you on our work in Korogocho in a few weeks time. For now, you can watch this recording of a conversation between our Artistic Director Paul Sutton and Peter Mwashi Litonde about this programme of work.

For more about Prospero and its potential contact C&T and Prospero’s Artistic Director Dr Paul Sutton.