Virginie Lavallée: Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Happy Producers Podcast. I'm so glad that you are here with us today. I am your host, Virginie Lavallée, and you can just call me your project management bestie because it's a mouthful in English. I hear you. And today I have an amazing guest. I am so happy that she accepted my invitation and I am in the company of Sarah Mallia. Hi Sarah.
Sarah Mallia: Hi. How are you?
Virginie Lavallée: I'm so good. I love your energy and I feel very grateful that I'm able to spend this episode with you. So allow me to introduce you to our community if they don't know you already. So Sarah Mallia is the co-founder of Freehand Studios and Pungulu Pa Productions. They are two Nairobi-based digital arts and social impact studios. She produces Uli & Tata’s African nursery rhymes, which I'm a huge fan of. And it's a 2D animated children's series following the adventure of two siblings in search of Africa's disappearing nursery rhymes. She is also the producer of Boy, a show about a six-year-old's adventure in Nairobi. I have to say, I love that Nairobi is always like a character in all of your IPs; it allows us to discover it some more. And Sarah also served as a 2024 Emmy Awards animation juror and a 2025 Digital Lab Africa juror. And outside of work, she enjoys analog film photography, dark room techniques, and beekeeping. That's cool.
Sarah Mallia: That is such a good point. We spend so much time working behind the screen, right? Or working at the computer. I love that.
Virginie Lavallée: So, Sarah, I first got to know you because of the Durban film art, which my partner LP was a mentor for, and I'm not sure that was allowed, but he shared some of the IPs from the mentees with me, and I kind of fell in love with Uli & Tata, just the colors, the universe, the songs. And through becoming a fan of your IP, well, I got to discover you. And when we met last year at Annecy, I got to realize firsthand what a force of nature you are and I feel like you cannot be stopped and that's really inspiring. So, I would like it if you could share your mission with us. So, not only are you producing, but you're also at the head of these businesses that are really centered around social impact. Can you share a little bit about your mission with us?
Sarah Mallia: Absolutely. Absolutely. First of all, thank you for the wonderful introduction. I really needed to hear that at the moment. I'm getting out of January blues and I'm so happy that it's later on in the year and the sun is shining again. Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of background. I'm actually a social scientist, and my undergraduate is in psychology. I come from a family of artists; my dad is a painter. So I've always been interested in how art, film, and other creative medias can impact social change, catalyze social movements, and so on. I worked with nonprofits for a really long time and I'd always find a way to bring communications and art and animation into all the projects that I ran. And then I met my husband, Chief, while I was actually working at an activist and arts collective in Nairobi called Power 254.
From the very beginning of our relationship, we knew that we wanted to do something together. At the time he was completely burnt out, doing ad work and looking for animated work with purpose. I said why don't we come together and I can bring my social science background and you can bring your experience in running a studio, and that's how Freehand Studios was first formed. The idea was that we were going to create digital arts for incredible organizations and social movements who wouldn't communicate with their audiences that well. Shortly after, we became parents. When we became parents, we started to look for content from East Africa primarily for our kids and we didn't find much.
In Kenya, we have 52 languages, right? 52 languages are spoken here, which is pretty crazy. We just had this idea: why don't we look for these songs and turn them into animations for our children? We were inspired by a YouTube channel called Comptines d'Afrique, which had beautifully produced songs from Central and West Africa. My thesis was on the importance of knowing your identity and being rooted in your well-being. It was very important for both me and my husband that our boys know where they're from and know their history. Our flagship show, Uli & Tata’s African Nursery Rhymes, is really a love letter to the country and the continent. The work in itself is very political and a nation-building project because we share Kenya in all its diversity and beauty to showcase the country to the people of Kenya and beyond.
Virginie Lavallée: I love how you approach this as a first social impact in Kenya, catering to the children in Kenya that need to see their own culture on screen. But also that you have a global approach. One of the things I'm a huge fan of that you're doing is that you're taking Uli & Tata off the screen and into the real world with the Pungulu Party, which is a way to celebrate culture. I love this idea of coming together in the real world and redefining the customer experience for the animated medium. Tell us a little bit about where you got your idea for the Pungulu Party.
Sarah Mallia: I've always loved events and real-world spaces. One thing I noticed when I started working as an animation producer was that it's very much you and your computer. I missed that tactile being with people. Our kids' lives are becoming much more atomized; they are either at home, at a play date, or watching TV. Nairobi actually doesn't have a lot of public spaces for kids to enjoy as a community, which is a real pity. We also started getting messages where adults were telling us, "Uli & Tata is also for me". Our music is made for kids and adults alike. The Pungulu Party is a family event. We wanted to bring together families to enjoy our heritage, our nature, and our stories. It's also a place to celebrate artisans who make things locally and sustainably. When we released the first season, there was a real lull, and this shift we're all experiencing in the industry gave us the opportunity to reimagine. As African studios, we've always been terribly underfunded, so we've always had to innovate and be lean.
Virginie Lavallée: I love that—embracing limitations and turning them into an opportunity. Nowadays with community building and 360 distribution, we're going to make some of the broadcasters redundant eventually.
Sarah Mallia: Government funding is important, but it shouldn't be the be-all and end-all. It would be wonderful to have the incentives, but outside of our control, it is like putting our power into somebody else's hands. I like that the current shift is audience-centric. We really undervalue growing our audience. On Kenyan TV, we get like 3 to 5 million views a week. Now, corporates are starting to come to us for licensing. We have created an IP that kids love, and we have "brand love". Why can't we buy yogurt and milkshakes that have our local characters? Licensing is uncharted waters for a lot of us, but that's why I've got lawyers and accountants. We're playing the long game.
Virginie Lavallée: As a woman entrepreneur, how do you hold that vision when there is the lull?
Sarah Mallia: It can be really tough. But being in this industry is a bit of a calling. I desperately want my kids to engage with content that reflects their realities. On a practical level, service work always helps keep the studio running. We have an in-studio training program because so many kids are graduating but not finding jobs. If you come on as an intern, you're actually working on the production. I've had really good experiences with Gen Z; they are fast and they deliver. They have boundaries, and the industry is lacking boundaries a lot, so I salute that.
Virginie Lavallée: Burnout is mostly about a misalignment with our personal values. So I'm so glad that you took the time to share your mission with us today. If our community wants to connect with you, where can they find you?
Sarah Mallia: You can go to our website, which is Pungulu Pa Productions. Pungulu Pa is the sound of something falling on the floor. Then we have Freehand Studios at www.freehandmovement.com. On social media, we're at Pungulu Pa Productions, Uli & Tata, and Freehand Studios on TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Virginie Lavallée: I'm going to link all of this in the comments. I'm very grateful that you joined me for this conversation. Sarah Mallia, thank you so much. And we will be back very soon with a brand new episode of the Happy Producers Podcast.
