Jerome Arab is an award-winning filmmaker, storyteller, and creative entrepreneur with over twenty years’ experience pioneering impactful narratives across television, film, music, and theatre. As a Visiting Creative Fellow at King's College London, Jerome is working to advance communication and understanding around security policy, practice and theory in ways that privilege inclusivity, diversity and community empowerment.

He is currently leading the Roots of Our Motherland project, a documentary series that investigates biodiversity loss, industrial pollution, and community-led conservation in Zambia and Zimbabwe. The project is produced in partnership with the King's Environmental Security Research Group, Fictive Media, and local Zambian and Zimbabwean community organisations. The project serves as a tool for policy change, corporate accountability, and community empowerment.

In addition to his work at King’s, Jerome is the Founder and CEO of Underrated Individuals, a UK-based production company dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices and connecting overlooked talent with global opportunities. His work is highly influenced by Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Communications for Development (C4D) methodologies, ensuring communities are co-creators and owners of their own narratives.

Jerome's artistic journey has included production of over fifty theatre productions, various television series for continental broadcasters and production houses (including Zambezi Magic), a wide portfolio of songs and albums with artists and communities across the African continent, and a range of children’s books designed to communicate African cultural experiences and narratives to a new generation. He is currently working on the development of two indigenous-led fictional television dramas: Copper Bullet (which explores illegal copper mining in Southern Africa) and Rise of the Ancients - ROTA (which uses African mythology to explore contemporary socio-economic and politico-cultural issues).

In addition to working with scholarly and policy communities, Jerome supports other creatives seeking to build their passion into sustained, high-impact careers. This has included building on the work of scholars such as Osterwalder & Pigneur (2010) and Carter & Carter (2020), to produce an Artist Business Canvas (2025) which foregrounds purpose-led approaches as a mechanism for achieving sustainable, creative businesses.

Jerome’s current creative outputs include a significant focus on the following strategic outputs:

• Storytelling and Strategic Communication

• Arts-Based Approaches to Policy Influence

• Decolonisation of Security Narratives

Empowerment and integration of local communities, leading experts, and critical institutions is central to Jerome’s work. This includes a focus on impact-led methodologies, including:

• Participatory Action Research

• Communications for Development (C4D)

• Lean Startup Approaches

Research Interests

Strategic Creative Outputs

• Environmental Security and Community-Led Conservation
• Storytelling and Strategic Communication for Policy Impact
• Arts-Based Approaches to Policy Influence
• Decolonisation of Security Narratives
• Visual Journalism as Research Methodology

Impact-Led Methodologies

• Participatory Action Research
• Communications for Development (C4D)
• Artist Business Canvas for Sustainable Creative Practice
• Baobab Principles: African-Centred Knowledge Systems
• Lean Startup Approaches to Social Innovation

Research Overview

Jerome's research investigates the intersection of environmental security, visual methodology, and decolonial practice in African conservation contexts. His work challenges extractive research paradigms by employing the Artist Business Canvas to create sustainable, ethically-grounded creative practices, and Baobab Principles, African epistemological frameworks emphasising rootedness, collective wisdom, and cyclical knowledge systems, to reframe conservation narratives.

Integrating participatory action research, Communications for Development (C4D), and lean innovation approaches, Jerome examines how documentary storytelling can function as both research method and policy intervention. His practice-based inquiry centres community agency, questioning who holds authority in security discourse and how arts-based communication can democratise knowledge production.

Current projects focus on Zambia and Zimbabwe's environmental/forestry guardians, exploring how community-integrated conservation models offer replicable frameworks for environmental security across Southern Africa while decolonizing dominant conservation narratives.

Key Concepts Explained

Artist Business Canvas

A strategic planning tool adapted for creative practitioners that maps value creation, community impact, and sustainable practice models. Jerome created this framework and uses it to ensure his work maintains artistic integrity while generating measurable social and policy outcomes, moving beyond traditional funding-dependency models.

Baobab Principles

An African-centred methodological framework inspired by the baobab tree's ecosystem role. These principles emphasise:

Deep Roots: Groundedness in local knowledge and cultural context
Interconnectedness: Holistic systems thinking rather than siloed approaches
Longevity: Intergenerational impact and sustainable practice
Community Nourishment: Research that serves and sustains communities, not extracts from them
Adaptive Resilience: Methodologies that respond to changing contexts while maintaining core values

Jerome integrates Baobab Principles to decolonise research practice, ensuring his work strengthens rather than exploits the communities he engages with.

Publications

Non-Fiction

• Arab, J. (forthcoming) The Baobab Principles. Oxford: Underrated Individuals Limited.
• Arab, J. (2025) The Artist Business Canvas: Purpose to profit - how creatives can apply Silicon Valley's most powerful business principles. Oxford: Underrated Individuals Limited.

Creative Fiction

• Arab, J. (2025) Mikaela and the Chicken Thief. Illustrated by A. Bukama. Oxford: Underrated Individuals Limited.
• Arab, J. (2025) Borosai Tales: The Mirror of Faith. Oxford: Underrated Individuals Limited.
• Arab, J. (2025) Borosai Tales: The Lazy Hunter's Folly. Oxford: Underrated Individuals Limited.

 

Underrated Individuals Limited (Lead Organisation) https://www.ui-grp.com/

Current Projects:

• "Roots Of Our Motherland" Season 2 - Documentary series on Zimbabwe's forestry guardians (In Development)
• "ROOM" Documentary Series - Exploring holistic security in Zambia
• "Underrated Ideas" Podcast - Conversations with changemakers
• "UI Open Gym" - Removing barriers and opening doors to sport and physical activity in Oxford, England
  
  

Key Partnerships: Oxford City Council | Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe | Environmental Security Research Group, KCL | Lilayi Lodge (Conservancy) | Food Forest Foundation (Regenerating Ecosystems)

Available for: Guest lectures, research collaborations, student mentorship, and speaking engagements on environmental security and visual research methodologies.