This two-month course provides Rwandan and Kenyan students with the tools and insights needed to become visual storytellers and drive change, using photography not just for documentation, but as a powerful form of media advocacy. The focus is on developing and visualising compelling narratives linked to clean cooling and cold-chain. In agri-food systems, where much of the process remains invisible to the public eye, visual imagery makes the hidden visible and the complex understandable. It is a unique approach to the challenges facing the sector - teaching aspiring photographers to become specialists in this specific field of work
Through assignments and both offline and online lectures, students learn to recognise what should be present in a functioning cold-chain system, such as insulated transport vehicles, temperature monitoring of cargo, and refrigerated cold stores, to enable perishable products to be preserved and value to be added to the outputs of farmers and manufacturers. Just as crucially, they’re taught to identify when things go wrong because of missing or ineffective cold-chain components. Showing food waste, hygiene breaches, and related poverty is also part of the job
However, this course goes far beyond technical training. Students learn how to visualise compelling narratives, compose images with purpose, highlight urgent issues, and use their work to access various media platforms, engage communities, and influence decision-makers. It trains students to use imagery as a strategic communication tool.
A key addition to the course is the creation of the Clean Cooling Image Database, a curated, open-access image library containing photographs captured by students. This growing resource documents evidence-based imagery of cold-chain related topics in a wide range of diverse contexts. It serves not only as an educational and advocacy tool, but also as a professional asset for sharing our vision with external clients, stakeholders, and the media. Our database will be released in the coming weeks and will be linked to the world-renowned photo agency Panos Pictures, giving us direct access to media outlets around the globe.
By the end of the course, students don’t just know how to take a picture, they know how to use it. They understand what they’re seeing, why it matters, and how to present it in ways that spark dialogue, action, and desperately needed change in the sector.
In September we will announce a new visual storytelling course, which will start in November. You can find out more about this course, here.
All images shown in this article were taken by our students during the course.