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Street artists around the world have been prominent in depicting issues concerning COVID-19, but the role of street art in public-making during the pandemic is unexplored. Despite burgeoning street art scenes in many African countries since the early 2000s, African street art is relatively neglected in critical street art scholarship. In response, this paper examines street art created during the pandemic in East African countries, principally Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, and explores the ways in which it is engaged in highly distinctive forms of public-making. Drawing primarily on qualitative online interviews with East African artists creating street art, and image analysis using online search tools, the paper argues that street art in urban areas is attempting to create knowledgeable publics through countering disinformation about the pandemic, to responsiblize publics through public health messaging and, through community activism, to build resilient publics. The paper concludes that street art is potentially an important tool in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in East African countries due to the proximity, and mutual constitution of, creative practices and publics, which emerge from the embedding of street art within the social spaces of cities and everyday experiences of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of music to sensitize, inform, and entertain for purposes of social organizing and public pedagogy is receiving increasing attention from scholars. This approach is usually selected because it allows a targeted message to reach large populations using varying mediums of transmission, such as social media, radio, television, and word of mouth. The lyrics can borrow from scientific information, political change messages, or a catchphrase common to many. It is also common to infuse a catchy line that most can remember, and markedly prominent musicians might come together to work on such a project to encourage fundraising or to push the message. The purpose of this article is to describe how a scientific organization based in the United States worked with budding musicians in Kenya to create music to inform communities in East Africa about prevention of coronavirus/COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]