Do Not Resuscitate… A Harvest of Shared Dreams and Journeys

(culled from the Brochure of the 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival, LABAF 2011)

Yes, as Programme Chairman for the Committee for Relevant Art, CORA, and ostensibly the accounting officer for the programming content of the Lagos Book and Arts Festival, LABAF, I, on behalf of the festival’s working committee, plead guilty to the oft-repeated accusation that the Visual Arts had often appeared shortchanged in the Festival’s overall scheme.We have been here 13 times, and we have garnered almost as many knocks for always subjugating the Fine Arts; sometimes making this critical segment of the festival appear like an afterthought in the festival’s programming vision. Of course, the Festival itself -- by the design of its birth -- is biased to Literature and Book-related events.

True Confession: At conception in 1999, LABAF started in our minds as a Book Fair, at most a celebration of the Written Word as an essential of the core objective of “facilitating the growth of the human capital resources of the nation”. Perhaps this was because the festival itself -- though a response to the national call for celebration of Creativity as expressed in the Federal Government declaration (now regrettably abandoned) of every September 14 as National Creativity Day -- was largely inspired by the legendary personage of the father of contemporary African novel, Prof Chinua Achebe, in whose honour the declaration was made that year, 1999.

But hold it there!!! And this is a digression….