Arts Initiates was born of the resolutions made after the watershed Arterial Conference on vitalizing African Cultural Assets held at Goree Island in Senegal in March 2007.Sixty-one delegates from Africa and donor organisations attended the conference that gave birth to Imagine Africa, a massive drive to revive art and culture through networking and exchange as well as training.

The donors and artists came from different disciplines including; film, music, theatre, visual arts, literature and dance, arts administrators, consultants, journalists, embassy personnel, publishers and policy makers.It was realised that the media plays a vital role in promoting the arts and that there was need for training some media personnel on various aspects of the arts so that they can contribute more meaningfully to the development of the arts.

The then Herald entertainment editor Wonder Guchu was one of the five culture journalists who attended the conference together with two Zambians, one from Ghana and two from Senegal. Guchu’s attendance was a follow-up to the Durban International Film Festival media training programme carried out by NSJ, a southern African media training organisation and funded by DCCD in 2006.

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