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Frontline art and culture advocacy organisation, the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), has unveiled the plans for the 2025 edition of its flagship project, the Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF), which holds November 10- 16 at two venues — Freedom Park on Hospital Road (by Broad Street|), Lagos Island, and the JRandle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, at Onikan, Lagos Island.
The theme for the 27th edition of LABAF is: ‘Change: Imagining Alternatives’, stated the Programme Chair of CORA, Jahman Anikulapo, who is also the festival director.
Ina statement signed by Anikulapo, the main feature of the festival is Conversations |Networking | Workshops | Mentorships | Children’s Festival.
Some of the highlights include 12 Plenaries on politics, culture and society; 4 Sessions on Literature in the Digital Age (AI, etc); 10 BookTreks (book chats) on fiction, drama, poetry, nonfiction; 2 days of Green Festival – N: 16 events – Nov 14 & 15 and 2 days of Open Mic.
“Our subject, this year, is primarily inspired by the need to encourage new processes to transform our society into a productive, knowledge economy as we progress through the second quarter century of the world’s fourth largest democracy. The 62-programme of events during the festival hopes to show several points of light in a dark, pessimistic world headlined by Herdsmen killings, Boko Haram sit-ins, and other convulsions in the polity that unsettle us all. Can we all, through books, imagine a world of better possibilities? LABAF 2025 will be spotlighting novels, non-fiction narratives and dramas in which hope, doggedness, the will to win, is a key subject,” said a statement from the LABAF Prog directorate.
The statement continues that “the focus of the festival remains Literacy Campaign through the instrumentality of the arts in all its dimensions, hence the 62 events that would be held in the course of the one-week duration of the festival will be devoted to using the various disciplines of the arts – literature, visual, performing, media arts, etc – to deepen CORA’s founding objective of educating, enlightening and consequently empowering (3Es) the citizenry to participate in the process of nation building.
“The ultimate aim is to explore the artistic and cultural resources of the nation to help develop its human capital resources for the benefit of the entire society.”
