VIPERA is the acronym for “Villages Performing Arts” is a Kisima Imarisha’s (KI) programme that is aimed at providing community based expressions, over 44 youth groups supported by KI to discover, exploit, and brand the product for ecotourism, communication and youth self sustainability. As a forum, it goes beyond using theatre for entertainment and education to providing linkages of economic empo
werment to the Orphaned and vulnerable children and youth. Art is one of the ancient and primordial means and tool of community expression on people emotions, feelings, life and experiences; it depicts realities of people in their general interaction with surrounding and therefore is a means of expression to the holistic experiences of people in that particular society. Art or artistic processes can be a significant tool in solving or can be an intervention strategy for reducing poverty and solving human crisis and social conflict. VIPERA intends to build community expression through art and therefore committed to train and develop the Art talents among children and youth to a professional level whereby any presentation qualifies to what we call the artistic merit not losing the originality and community experiences and touch. It is beyond creativity to describe a true community experience as it were. For instance; a traditional dance need to acquire a place, people, language, cultural items (clothing) and tempo to qualify. Looking to literature which is a form of expression, VIPERA has competent script writers and directors. Literature will be primarily informative — technical, scholarly, journalistic in contemporary speaking. Certain forms of writing, however, will be regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Literary forms possess artistic merit, the nature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize.
