Nthatuoa Koeshe
LOCAL non-governmental organisation Ba re e ne re will tomorrow host a workshop for young storytellers and readers at Alliance Francaise in Maseru.
Dubbed Visual Literacy, the workshop seeks to give young storytellers and readers skills to decode signs and messages depicted through visuals from a critical perspective.
The workshop is for young storytellers and readers, who are interested in film, photography and language.
Ba re e ne re promotes literacy, storytelling and showcasing different forms of telling stories.
Speaking to the Weekender, facilitator of the programme, Lineo Segoete, said the workshop was the third part of a series of seminars hosted in partnership with Alliance Francaise.
She said eventually they hope to develop a creative dictionary which will be published at the end of the year.
“The Ba re e ne re dictionary uses creative imaginations to expand the Sesotho vocabulary and strengthen our relationship with it,” Segoete said.
She said the workshop will approach literacy of images and movies as a way to think critically and creatively about language and power.
“We will show a series of films and talk about ways to analyse and understand them using images and film as inspiration,” she said.
She added they would also use the project to demonstrate the versatility of Sesotho through artistic depictions in the dictionary and also come up with new words which would be part of the publication.
Segoete said the decision to develop the dictionary was inspired by the realisation that there a several new terms which could enhance people’s freedom of expression.
“We have seen that Sesotho is not always considered a versatile language that can allow people to fully articulate themselves in current times and we are responding to that problem.”
She said images play a huge role in shaping people’s perceptions and added that it is important to appreciate the different ways of expressing stories such as poetry, songs, photography, film, theatre, fine art and many others.
Segoete said the workshop would equip participants with the ability to critically appreciate and comment on different images.
She said it would also enhance artistes’ ability to tell and interpret stories like messages in advertising, propaganda and the media in general.
