Fayia Foray

ByimageSALONE

Dec 16, 2020

Fayia Foray alias D’Poet was born on the 27th of March 1986 in Kangama, the headquarters town of Kissy Teng Chiefdom in Kailahun District, Sierra Leone. He was born to Sia Musu and Sahr Patrick Foray, both of whom are Kissy by the tribe. He is the fourth child in a family of nine with two already late. In 1991 his parents took their family to the neighbouring Republic of Guinee after the first gunshot in Bomaru Village, the start of the eleven years civil war. They lived in Kondu Lengorbengu, and were later migrated by the UNHCR to Kamayan Camp in 1992, where he started his primary education. He attended the Kamanya Refugee Camp Primary School – Guinee from grade 1 to 6 and furthered to secondary at the Kountaya Campa Senior Secondary School.

2003 – 2004 he read Secretarial Science at the Save the Children Skills Training Centre in Kountaya Camp and attained a certificate. On the 2nd of 2004, he left his parents and siblings and repatriated to Sierra Leone, and lived in Kailahun Town. In September 2005 he enrolled in National Secondary School – JSS3 and sat the Basic Education Certificate Examination. He furthered to senior secondary school in the same school and sat his West African Senior School Certificate Examination in 2008. In 2012, Fayia entered the Northern Polytechnic and got a Diploma in Community Development Studies -General, 2015 he furthered in the same institution and got a Higher National Diploma in Project Planning and Management after two years. He is currently a bachelor’s degree final year student at Atlantic International University and he is married and fathers two kids.

His Career

Fayia Foray is a creative writer, screenwriter, web designer, digital marketer, professional blogger, poet, movie director, producer, and the founder and owner of the communications and digital marketing company – Creative Pictures Ltd . Founder and owner of the biggest blog (imagesalone.com) in Sierra Leone that writes about professional African filmmakers and the African film industry.

He started his career as a dancer at a very tender age and in 2003 he started writing songs under the influence of modern music. While in Senior School – level two at the National Secondary School, he wrote a poem for a district competition organized by Plan International in Kailahun and won the third position out of hundreds of poems. He taught at the Wandor Agric Islamic Secondary School in Baama for a year; and transferred to the Vocational Secondary School in Boajibu – all in Kenema District. 2010 – 2011 he volunteered for Restless Development Sierra Leone, an international youth-friendly nongovernmental organization.

Later in 2011, he made his movie debut appearance in the movie, Dagadi – a movie that was directed by the veteran director, Dr. Julius Spencer. He continued as a screenplay writer in 2012. In 2012 he founded Creative Arts Production in Makeni and directed his first movie – Beautiful Ghost, a project that was lost by the editor. In 2017 he served as drama director for an art competition that was organized by the Behavior and Attitudinal Change Commission, a Sierra Leone Government Agency by then. He went further to register his production as a company with the name Creative Pictures Ltd in 2018.

Fayia has done a lot of consultancy work as a freelancer for various agencies. In February 2018 he acted upon a play for Pampanga Communications where they covered over nine communities in the North-Eastern part of Sierra Leone, telling stories that could unite communities. During the 2018 Sierra Leone General Elections, he served as a program coordinator for Community Agenda, a local non-governmental nonprofit organization where he wrote nonviolence election awareness-raising songs, plays, and poetry; and directed and led a group of young people who acted across nine districts in Sierra Leone. In 2019 he served as a consultant for the Rainbo Initiative where he trained young people in community theatre. In the same year, he volunteered and wrote an anthem for the National Youth Development Network, a network of young professionals.

in July 2018, he registered his company, Creative Pictures Ltd, which emanated from a film production group he founded in 2012 while he was in college. 2020, he founded imageSALONE, a notable blog that is well known amongst filmmakers in the Sierra Leone Film Industry. That is, imageSALONE is a platform that promotes Sierra Leone Professional Filmmakers at home and abroad and the industry at large. Presently, Fayia Foray works and promotes a lot of films and film-related activities within and outside of Sierra Leone.