I AM PETER PAGES BWIRE
Creative Economy Strategist & Institution Builder
I work at the intersection of creative economies, institutions, markets, policy and partnerships.My career began in film, but the deeper question has always been larger: what makes a creative economy actually work? How do ideas reach audiences? How do creative enterprises reach markets? What institutions connect talent to opportunity? And what infrastructure allows cultural activity to become durable economic value?Today, I build programmes, partnerships and institutions around those questions.Founder, Inhabitant Media Lab · Founder, Kitale Film Week · Chevening Scholar · Mandela Washington Fellow · French-African Foundation Young Leader 2021
FROM CREATIVE PRACTICE TO SYSTEMS
BUILDING THE ECOSYSTEM
For more than a decade, I have worked across creative industries, development, education and cultural institutions, moving increasingly from individual projects toward the systems that make projects possible.I have managed development programmes, taught film and media at university, built a regional cultural platform, developed relationships with governments and international partners, and worked across film distribution, exhibition, audience development and creative-industry programming.That experience has led me to a particular area of practice: building the institutions, programmes and connections that creative ecosystems need to grow.My work combines strategic thinking with practical delivery i.e. understanding a system, identifying its gaps, designing an intervention and building the partnerships required to make it function.
INHABITANT MEDIA LAB
BUILDING FROM CONTEXT
I founded Inhabitant Media Lab to build institutions and infrastructure for Africa’s creative economies.The work begins in Western Kenya, where I am exploring how creative-economy infrastructure can be developed outside established capital-city ecosystems and what can be learned from doing so.The initial area of depth is the screen economy: distribution, exhibition, audiences, markets, practitioner networks and international circulation.The ambition is broader.
Inhabitant works across three connected areas:Intelligence: research, mapping, data and policy insight.
Ecosystem & Market Development: networks, audiences, market access and institutional connections.
International Exchange: partnerships, knowledge exchange, institutional collaboration and access to international opportunities.
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The principle: Invent from context.
WHAT I HAVE BUILT
SCREEN ECONOMIES
In 2022, I founded Kitale Film Week to build sustained access to cinema, cultural programming and industry opportunity in Western Kenya. Across four editions, the platform has presented 200+ films from 20+ countries and reached 8,000+ attendees, while building relationships across government, embassies, cultural institutions, film organisations, educators and creative practitioners.The experience became a practical laboratory for a larger question: Can cultural infrastructure be deliberately built beyond the usual centres of creative power?My academic and professional work in film has explored the same systems from another direction — particularly distribution, exhibition, audiences and the circulation of African cinema. My MA dissertation at the University of Exeter and London Film School was titled: “Distributing African Films to African Audiences: Challenges and Opportunities in East Africa.”Together, this work has shaped my interest in the infrastructure between creative production and economic opportunity.
IDEAS THAT DRIVE THE WORK
Institutions, Markets, Culture & the Future
I am interested in the questions beneath creative industries.What institutions does Africa need for its creative economies to function at scale?
Why do ecosystems with abundant talent often struggle to create durable markets?
What changes when cultural infrastructure is built outside major capitals?
How should governments understand the creative economy as economic infrastructure?
What will AI change about production, distribution, audiences, ownership and value?My writing and research explore these questions through creative economy strategy, cultural policy, African screen economies, institutional development, technology and international cooperation.I am interested in working with people and institutions trying to build something that lasts — governments, foundations, development organisations, universities, cultural institutions, creative enterprises and international partners.BUILDING SYSTEMS THAT MAKE CREATIVITY SUSTAINABLE
