Imigani | Your cultural calendar + creative directory

[READ] In Kwibuka32: How Our Past Initiative Brings the Youth Into the Heart of Commemoration, a reflective essay by @cynthia.butare explores what remembrance asks of a generation born after the Genocide against the Tutsi. Moving between an Umuganda day in Ndera, the April 9 gathering at Kicukiro-Nyanza, and the play Inzibutso, the piece traces how @our_past_initiative ’s commemoration shifts from something witnessed to something lived, from showing up, to taking part, to carrying forward. At the centre of the evening was Inzibutso, a play brought together by multidisciplinary artist @uwa_mahoro from two independently written texts by playwrights @benimanadomii and @junior_rumaga . Moving across three spaces, a room of isolation, a courtroom where God is put on trial, and an investigation room confronting perpetrators, the play brings together voices of survivors, witnesses, and those responsible to explore memory, truth, and what remains unresolved. Starting with a question that sits at the centre of it all, the essay asks how you carry something you did not live, and what it means for remembrance to move beyond an event into something done, repeated, and held across time. Read the full essay at imigani.co/essays. Got an essay you’d like to publish with us? Link in bio to submit.

Across April, #kwibuka32 unfolds through a series of gatherings, screenings, and performances that create space for reflection, memory, and shared experience across the city. The programme begins on April 9 with @our_past_initiative at the Nyanza Genocide Memorial, an annual gathering that brings together testimony, poetry, theatre, music, and dialogue. On April 10, @cinekwibuka takes place at Canal Olympia Rebero, with a film programme curated by @myriam_birara exploring memory, identity, and healing through documentary cinema, including Things We Don’t Say by @ornfilm and Reclaiming History by @karemangingo , co-directed with Matthias Frickel. On April 11, Inzira is presented at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, followed by Mu Kwibuka 32 at @kigali.soul , a community evening shaped by spoken word, poetry, and live performance under the theme of Ubuntu. The programme continues on April 15 at @lespacerw with a screening of Rwanda la surface de réparation by François-Xavier Destors and Marie Thomas-Penette, a documentary reflecting on Rwanda’s history through football. On April 17, Reclaiming History by @karemangingo and Matthias Frickel returns to @lespacerw with a film that examines the colonial roots of division and their lasting impact. On April 22, the evening moves between performance and film, beginning with @openmicwenorw and continuing with a screening of Imfura by @karemangingo , bringing together spoken word and cinema in a shared space. The programme continues on April 24 with The 600 by Laurent Basset and Richard Hall, and concludes on April 29 with Didy by François-Xavier Destors and @gaelkamilindi , both screened at @lespacerw and each engaging with memory and personal history through distinct cinematic approaches. Across these moments, the month moves between voices, images, and collective presence, holding space for reflection in different forms.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s perspective comes from @denysewera , a photographer whose work centres on the lives and realities of women. Through her book Strong Women Behind a Strong Coffee, published by @illume_editions , Denyse traces her long relationship with a group of women coffee farmers in northern Rwanda. What began as a photographic series grew into a body of work shaped by proximity, repetition, and connection, grounded in the recognition of something she had first witnessed in her mother. In her words, she reflects on womanhood as something that moves across contexts and lives, recognising in these women not only what they do, but what they carry, what they hold, and what they continue to shape. She speaks about the importance of holding these stories with dignity, and about resisting the tendency to reduce them to familiar narratives about farmers. What emerges is a reflection on continuity, on shared realities, and on the ways women, across rural and urban life, recognise themselves in one another. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her reflections on recognition, connection, and the conditions that shape how women’s lives are lived and understood.

Easter weekend calls for movement. @walkingforhealthybodyandmind brings together participants for a guided wellness walk through the city, centred on movement, connection, and mental clarity. The walk offers space to step away from daily routines and take part in a shared evening experience at your own pace. The meeting point is Kacyiru TV 1 at 7.45pm.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s reflection comes from @boukurumusic , a singer and songwriter whose work blends soul, Gakondo, and contemporary influences, moving through music, language, and memory. Known for performances that carry emotional weight, her sound is rooted in cultural heritage and a distinct creative vision, unfolding across festivals and residencies in Rwanda, across Africa, and in Europe. Drawing from traditional Rwandan songs and poetic forms, her reflection traces how women have often been held in language through beauty, grace, and reverence, sometimes elevated to something almost spiritual, yet distant from lived experience. Alongside this, she considers the structure these songs carried, men as protectors, women as those to be seen, praised, and received. A way of seeing that shaped not only language, but expectation. She asks what it means to move beyond that, and what it means to hold both what has been and what is becoming. Not a rejection, but an expansion that takes what was there and goes further. From beauty to strength. From one way of being to many. From what was said to what is now being said. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her reflections on tradition, language, and the evolving expressions of womanhood.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s perspective comes from @emelyne_spencer , a self-taught chef and multidisciplinary artist whose work moves between food, styling, and creative direction. Through @trucs_deouf.official , a roaming live-cooking gathering first launched in Nairobi in 2022 and now rooted in Kigali, she creates spaces where food becomes a way of bringing people together, each edition shaped by its own rhythm, its own setting, its own community. In today’s perspective, she reflects on creative freedom, on the tension of a kitchen long associated with women, yet dominated by men when it comes to chefing, and on the process of building something from very little. She traces Trucs de Ouf back to its simplest beginnings, a hand, a knife, a lighter, and the belief that whatever was there was enough, and how from that, something entirely its own came into form. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her reflections on authorship, space, and the conditions that shape who gets to cook, create, and be recognised.

Saturday in Kigali spreads across the city in layers, moving from open-air gatherings into more intimate spaces, and then into the night. The day begins in Remera at @zariacourtrw , where Cars & Coffee brings together car culture, music, food and conversation, starting at 12pm as the space fills gradually through the afternoon. In Kimihurura, Incuti Cookout opens from 2pm as a social gathering built around food, games and live performances, carrying its energy into the evening, with @virungabeverages . At @ikawacafe , also from 2pm, Paint & Sip opens into a more intimate rhythm where art, drinks and conversation come together in a rooftop setting overlooking the city. By 4pm in Nyarutarama, Lost Avenue takes shape at Kamahwa Hub as a streetwear-led pop-up where fashion, music and youth culture intersect, creating a space for discovery and connection, led by @lostrecordsrw . Changeable Mindset opens at 6pm in Kiyovu, where exhibition, performance and conversation come together around ideas of transformation and creative expression by @teta_media_uwamahoro . In Kimihurura, @rckigalivirunga marks 25 years with the RCKV Silver Jubilee Gala Dinner at 6pm at the Kigali Convention Centre, bringing together talks, presentations and fundraising centred on long-term community work. In Masoro, @velvetcinemakgl presents Black Swan at 7pm, drawing audiences into an immersive setting shaped by film, sound and atmosphere. Later in the evening in Kimihurura, Soirée Rumba & Seben begins at 7pm at @glimpse_hotel , moving through classic Congolese rhythms in a space built on dance and shared memory. Also at 7pm in Kimihurura, Jazz and Rap at Kigali Soul, hosted by @kigalijazz , brings live performance into the night, blending genres and creating moments shaped by collaboration and sound. By night, @atmosferakigali takes shape from 7pm at KCEV as a large-scale gathering where afro house, amapiano and movement carry the energy into the late hours. This is Kigali on a Saturday, a city that holds many worlds at once and makes room for all of them.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s perspective comes from @ingabire.gretta , a poet, writer, and performer based in Kigali. She returns to a moment from high school, when she was first introduced to #Nyirarumaga, a poetess connected to the origins of ubusizi, the Rwandan poetic tradition. Having grown up perceiving poetry as something largely associated with men, she describes the force of discovering a woman linked not only to poetry itself, but to the formation of an uruhondo, a lineage of poets transmitting history, culture, and memory through oral expression. At the time, her relationship to poetry felt personal, instinctive, something she carried without a clear sense of where it came from or whether it belonged to her. Nyirarumaga changed that. What the discovery made visible was that what she had experienced as solitary was in fact part of something older. A continuity. A lineage. Something that existed before her, and that she could now claim as her own. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her thoughts on poetry, transmission, and the ways cultural memory is carried, inherited, and recognised.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s feature comes from @liseisaro , an architect whose practice extends into research and documentation. In her words, she takes us back to a time of doubt, when she felt unseen and could not find women who had designed and built projects on the continent. Through conversations and independent research, she began documenting the work of women architects across Africa, initially as a way to find proof that this path was possible. As this material piled up, what began as a personal inquiry moved beyond her own page. From this process, @african_female_architects was formed, a platform dedicated to documenting and making visible the work of women architects across the continent. In today’s feature, she speaks about the role of visibility, and what it means to continue working in a field where finding your footing is an ongoing feeling. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her perspective on absence, research, and the work of building references where they do not yet exist.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Sunday in Kigali begins early and moves across the day through movement, music, and shared creative spaces. From sunrise hikes to afternoon sessions, here is what is on tomorrow. The day starts before the city wakes up. Nyamweru Hike with Nyota Trails takes participants through Kigali’s surrounding landscapes at sunrise, with a 6:30am departure from Rubia Coffee Roasters in Kimihurura alongside @nyota_trails , and an invitation to come prepared for the terrain and changing weather conditions. By midday, the pace shifts indoors. Sunday Soul Sessions with Gatsinga Julien takes place at The Loft in Kicukiro from 3pm, with @gatsinga leading an easy-going acoustic brunch session shaped by live stripped-back music, food, and conversation across the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, Zaria Court in Remera opens up for Women’s Month Art Sessions from 3pm, where @zariacourtrw hosts live painting and sketching with Lincka N. Lydie, centred on observing the creative process as it develops and engaging with each stage of creation. By the time the afternoon settles, the day will have moved from open hillsides to intimate rooms, from first light to the slow close of a Sunday well spent. There is more happening across the month, and the full list of events is in the link in bio. If you have something coming up, you can submit it there too.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, @imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s reflection comes from @sandra.muteteri.heremans , a film director whose practice draws from art history and looks at how images shape the perception of places and societies. Her work constructs cinematic narratives through archival material and montage. In today’s reflection, she speaks about the conditions of working as a woman filmmaker, and the questions that emerge when creative practice meets the realities of life. Moving through the pace of filmmaking, production, montage, and festival circuits, she reflects on financial instability, time, and the possibility of starting a family alongside a life in film. Her perspective considers how these timelines intersect, and how the structure of the industry shapes what remains possible, visible, or unspoken for women navigating both creative work and motherhood. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her reflections on precarity, time, and the lived realities of sustaining a life in film, and the questions that continue to shape how women position themselves within it.

Month of Her is an editorial series by @imigani marking International Women’s Day, placing on record the work and perspectives of women shaping the creative industries in Kigali and across the diaspora. The series is presented in collaboration with @norrsken_eastafrica . Through the series, Imigani documents how their ideas travel, influence, and build cultural presence beyond borders. Today’s reflection comes from @flyingroots , a multidisciplinary artist whose work moves across poetry, theatre, film, performance, and installation. Her practice often begins with poetry and expands into multidisciplinary forms, translating ideas into performance, cinema, and spatial environments. Alongside her creative work, she initiated @unmutetriplea , a platform creating space for creative expression and dialogue through recurring gatherings and activations. In today’s reflection, she speaks about what it means to be a woman in Rwanda, and why the safety that comes with it is something she holds with genuine pride, while remaining clear-eyed about the cultural work that policy alone cannot reach. Her perspective reflects an appreciation for the context Rwanda offers, one in which she is able to bring her contribution through @unmutetriplea , while remaining attentive to how silence continues to shape what is seen, acknowledged, or left unspoken. Through this work, @unmutetriplea engages with the norms that allow this silence to persist, recognising it as one of the conditions through which r*pe culture can persist. Swipe to hear her perspective. Across the carousel, audio moments offer a glimpse into her reflections on silence, perception, and the ways cultural norms shape what is recognised, addressed, or allowed to remain invisible.