The Jalada Mobile Literary & Arts Festival is a hybrid between a traditional place-based festival and a bus tour. The tour will cover 5 countries (12 towns): Kenya (Nairobi, Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa), Uganda (Kampala, Kabale), DRC (Goma), Rwanda (Kigali) and Tanzania (Mwanza, Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar). The festival will celebrate diversity and create living connections between writers, artists, and diverse audiences in the big cities and small towns across East Africa. The Arusha leg is a one-day activity featuring artist conversations and performances. ARTIST CONVERSATIONS: Inclusion of Local Languages in Spoken word, Theatre and Music for the Purposes of Preservation We explore whether musicians and spoken word artists consciously engage in the use of their local languages when creating and performing their art? Is it possible to move beyond Kiswahili as the dominant form of expression to the use of other local languages as artists live out their creative lives? To what extent would the residents of such a multicultural city be interested in performances that go beyond the usual lingua franca? PERFORMANCES Jalada will organize poetry night with a musical twist – collaboration between Jalada performers and spoken word performers and live music. The focus of the performances will be on how language is used to by artists express specific socio-cultural concerns in a growing metropolis. Follow Jalada Africa and Twitter @Jaladaafrica for updates on featured panelists and artists.