About the Locals
The Locals is a research, storytelling initiative that centers local knowledge, lived experience, and community voices—through photography, storytelling, writing and advocacy.
Our goal is to build a sustainable foundation for visual anthropology and community evidence based storytelling. We are seeking $40,000 to establish a creative storytelling space, host local exhibitions, and co-create a growing archive of community stories rooted in dignity, everyday life, and cultural memory.
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Publication
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Collaborations
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community
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Exhibitions and Digitization
Our Understanding
We strongly believe that the people closest to the issues are also closest to the solutions.
What We Do:
- Research & Documentation
Community-led and participatory research that captures lived realities, not just statistics. - Storytelling & Media
Visual storytelling, writing, photo essays, short films, and exhibitions that humanize data and policy issues. - Advocacy & Influence
Translating community stories into insights that can inform NGOs, funders, media, and policymakers. - Capacity BuildingWe are building a community-based knowledge system through narrative curation.
We explore new and meaningful ways of documenting life, grounded in lived experiences, co-creation and visual anthropology. Our work blend photography, writing and storytelling to challenge stereotypes and reimagine how communities are seen and unseen at the same time. We are for everything worth remebering.
Visual Anthropology
Too often, the stories of places like Kibera are told from the outside, filtered through distant perspectives that miss the depth, nuance and humanity of daily life.The Locals exists to reclaim narrative power, document lived experiences and produce community-rooted knowledge through photography, writing, research and dialogue.
A visual Anthropology of kibera and Fashion
Through immersive fieldwork, exploring the intersections of fashion, identity, agency, sustainability and cultural pride. Using portraits, behind-the-scenes moments and environmental context, this work documents how grassroots fashion is used a site for protest, resilience, beauty and belonging.
A visual Anthropology of Aging Care & Dignity.
The project explores how elder persons in Kibera are shaping their community while navigating aging, memory and care. In a part of the city often associated with youth and energy, the project focuses on the elderly to document moments of joy, struggle, caregiving and collective memory. It examine community-based elder care models in resource-scarce urban settings, the visibility of older persons in media and intergenerational gaps in narratives about aging. It challenges reductive portrayals and advocate for dignified aging.
Markets Sustainability, Culture & Exchange
In collaboration with Parijat Chakrabarti (Erb Institute, University of Michigan), the project investigated Nairobi’s local markets as vital social and economic ecosystems. Through photography and fieldwork, We explore how tradition and modernity converge in market life where commerce, technology, social relationships and urban rhythms meet. Beyond trade, markets are living environments in which resilience, creativity and community persist every day.
Motherhood, Girlhood & Second Chances in Kibera
The project documents the lives of teenage mothers supported by Soraya, a community-based organization in Kibera. Through visual and narrative portraits, it explores the intersections of motherhood, education, stigma and hope. It focus on stories of strength, vulnerability, and transformation portraying young mothers as leaders in their own right.
Otamatsuri: Pop Culture, Fandom & Urban Belonging
Kenya’s and Africa’s first and largest exclusive anime and manga convention—as a site of cultural expression, youth identity, and community formation. It explores how global pop culture is localized and reinterpreted within Nairobi’s creative scene.
Focusing on cosplay, gaming tournaments, and fan interactions, the work captures how attendees embody characters from anime, games, and films. It also documents the vibrant marketplace of exhibitors, including local vendors such as Nairobi Otaku Shop.
Music, including J-pop and K-pop, live performances, and shared experiences, the project reflects on how Otamatsuri functions as a cultural hub where community, identity, and global influences converge in contemporary urban Africa.
Africa Bonodori: Culture, Exchange & Belonging
Centered on Africa Bonodori Festival, a traditional Japanese summer celebration held in Nairobi, this project explores cultural exchange, identity, and global belonging within an African urban context. Through immersive documentation, it captures experiences of authentic Japanese food trucks, Bon Odori dance accompanied by Japanese music, cosplay, and vibrant cultural performances. The project reflects on how diasporic and local communities come together to reimagine tradition—creating spaces where cultures meet, adapt, and coexist in contemporary Nairobi.
Our Approach to Storytelling & Inquiry
Opening doors to knowledge, spaces, and voices that often go unnoticed or overlooked.
Doing deep, ethical, community-centered research.
Shifting the center of storytelling from the outsider’s lens to the lived realities, language and wisdom of those at the heart of the story.
Working together with community, Hand in Hand.
Preserving memory for dignity, history, and future generations and advocacy
Our Vision
We aim to establish a modest physical space that serves as a hub for exhibitions, editing, workshops and archiving. From the same space, launch storytelling labs that invite community members to explore everyday life through visual and narrative expression. Host public exhibitions in shared community spaces, produce and distribute zines amplifying local voices and begin building a living community archive that preserves oral histories, photographs and reference materials.
