The heart of the work
Storytelling
The thread that connects the scattered fragments.
Novels, documentaries, music videos, radio and podcasts, data turned into narrative, immersive experiences. So many ways of doing the same thing: telling stories.
Storytelling is not one activity among others. It is what connects everything else.
I write novels - my ultimate passion. I direct documentaries and music videos. I host radio, and lately podcasts. I make data speak through story maps and interactive platforms. I build immersive narratives. What can look like dispersion is in fact a single practice.
In the complexity of the world, what matters is no longer knowing the data, but the ability to connect it - to give it a meaning that isn't visible at first glance - depth, direction. To tell a story is to gather the scattered fragments into something that holds together.
01 · Writing
The novel, my ultimate passion
Fiction as the first form of storytelling: holding a whole world inside the length of a book.
Novel · 584 pages · Éditions Mélanzé
Que la terre nous soit légère
Two destinies intertwine against the backdrop of a drama in an African forest: a child heir to a lineage of warrior-musicians who takes the road of exile to Europe, and a young humanitarian climbing the ranks of an international organisation, to the point of overflow. A first novel about land, exile and the contradictions of aid.
A second novel, nearing completion, is set in the drylands of the Ewaso Ng'iro corridor in Northern Kenya - the same landscape as the Savannah Express expedition.
02 · Film, documentary & music videos
Giving voice through image
From feature documentary to music video - directing and producing images that tell the real with the people who live it.
Feature · in post-production · co-directed with Thomas Grand
Les veines ouvertes de la terre
A documentary on land grabbing and the agroecological transition in Senegal. The film gives voice to those on the ground - farmers, researchers, decision-makers - and questions the links between land, food and sovereignty.
Co-directed with Thomas Grand, a director-producer whose films have received more than 80 international awards.
The project behind it · Agora / CREATES
AgroVoiceS - voices of the transition
A documentation and advocacy device that surfaces the voices of the agroecological transition, from farmer to policymaker: documentaries, participatory videos, photo reportage and theatre forum. Stories that touch, inform and mobilise - the same intent as Savannah Express.
The AgroVoiceS projectMusic videos · SomOne Music
Clips - directed & produced
Directing and producing music videos between Senegal, Mali and Kenya, with artists like Titoh Star and Sammy Ramaz - building bridges between the continent's music scenes.
03 · Sound, radio & podcasts
Storytelling for the ear
Radio, podcast and music as ways of carrying the culture, politics and stories of a territory.
Radio host · 7 years
WaGwaan Station
Seven years, in Geneva and Bamako, a show on African and diasporic music and culture - and their politics. Giving a stage to voices and sounds that rarely circulate in mainstream media.
New · CREATES
Podcast studio
A podcast studio recently launched at CREATES, in Senegal, to carry the voices of research-action, climate and food systems to new audiences.
Production · SomOne Music
Soundtracks
Producing artists and composing soundtracks and instrumentals. Sound as a narrative layer in its own right.
04 · Photography & curation
Giving a frame to other people's vision
Designing and directing photographic formats that surface the stories carried by communities and local artists.
Dak'Art Biennale 2024 · via the ARTS project
Yaay Dund - Regenerating Life
As co-director of the ARTS project (Agroecology for Resilient Territories in Senegal), I designed and led the national photography competition and the public programme of this exhibition-event presented at the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art 2024, hosted by DyTAES around the photographs of Raphaël Belmin.
The competition surfaced three award-winning visions - Marie Bop (Jury Grand Prize), Elimane Diao (Public Prize) and Yolenn Flaux (Young Photographer Prize) - around women, care and agroecological knowledge. The photographs remain the work of their authors; my role was artistic direction and narrative framing.
Explore Yaay Dund & the laureates05 · Data & interactive
Making data speak
Turning research and cartography into explorable narratives - because data says nothing until you connect it.
Interactive atlas
CREATES Atlas
Participatory mapping of agroecological initiatives across the Sahel. Field data becomes a visual, navigable story.
atlas.creates.ngo →
National geoportal
OneMap Myanmar
Democratising a country's land information through a national mapping platform. Data storytelling at state scale.
Learn more →
Sites & platforms
Story maps & sites
Dozens of websites, story maps and interactive platforms built for research, culture and the environment.
See the work →
06 · Immersive narratives
To make people feel, not only understand
Building narrative experiences that pull the audience inside the story, where data and narrative meet.
Scrollytelling · photography by Fabrice Monteiro
The Prophecy - Nefertiti and the Eleventh Plague of Africa
An immersive scrollytelling narrative on resilience and resistance amidst Mother Nature's fury. Building on Fabrice Monteiro's photographic series The Prophecy, I wrote the text and built a scrolling narrative experience that pulls the reader into an African climate fable - from the disappearance of a queen to the great exodus and the pockets of resistance.
Photography: Fabrice Monteiro · Text & narration: Joan Bastide. Exactly the kind of curated interactive story Savannah Express will produce online.
What's next
Savannah Express
All these forms converge into an 18-month climate storytelling expedition in Northern Kenya: writing, film, sound, photography, data and immersion, co-led with young Kenyan creators.