MansA Lab's first call for applications officially closed on 12 September 2025. Thank you to everyone for your interest and inspiring projects! The process now continues with the selection of the 12 winners, to be announced in mid-October.
From 22 July to 12 September 2025, MansA Lab invited cultural project leaders to share their ideas around African worlds and their diasporas. The many applications received testify to the richness and diversity of the imaginations explored by this new generation of cultural entrepreneurs.
The selection jury will meet on 7 October 2025 to examine each proposal and identify the 12 projects that will join the first cohort. Incubation will then begin in November 2025 at MansA and online, for a period of 8 months, until June 2026. This first cohort is sponsored by Fif Tobossi, founder of Booska-P media.
Selected projects will benefit from personalised support, shared resources, and strategic networking, enabling them to develop and integrate their initiatives into a lively, collaborative ecosystem.
Supporting new cultural voices from the African world
MansA Lab supports cultural projects that highlight and tell the story of African worlds. The incubator supports emerging or developing initiatives in the cultural and creative industries, offering personalised support, shared resources, and strategic networking to foster the growth and sustainability of projects.
The programme runs both on-site (Paris 10e) and online, from November 2025 to June 2026. Each project benefits from a workstation, access to meeting rooms and programming spaces, as well as customised support in strategy, business modelling, communication, project management, editorial and artistic content, and fundraising. The cost of participation is €200 per project, per month.
Key points:
- • Duration: 8 months (November 2025 to June 2026).
- • Number of projects selected: 12.
- • Target audience: artist-entrepreneurs, curators, producers, emerging media outlets, hybrid organizations…
- • Special focus: underrepresented groups, African diaspora communities, working-class neighborhoods, and overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte), with support for mobility provided by the French Development Agency
The programme promotes projects across all types of formats — media, publishing, audiovisual, fashion, cross-media or transdisciplinary — and selects initiatives capable of renewing the imaginations of African worlds. Each cohort aims to build a living network of committed cultural entrepreneurs and create synergies with the MansA ecosystem.
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