British Council has come to be known for a bevy of highly impactful interventions in a sector now globally referred to as the Creative Industries over the past decade, including the Crossing Borders online creative writing scheme (with Lancaster University), the New Writing in Drama Project (with the Royal Court Theatre), the International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year award, the music and publishing versions of that initiative and the more recent creative entrepreneurship training programmes organized in collaboration with the Pan African University and the Creative Industries Development Agency (CIDA). These interventions in creativity in Nigeria came to a head with the recently concluded Creative Industries Expo held at the Eko Hotel and Suites in Victoria Island.
Organized in collaboration with an impressive list of partners like the Bank of Industry, UK Trade and investment, Goethe Institut, Nexim Bank, Federal Ministry of Culture and Channels Television and Cool FM as media partners, the expo delivered resoundingly well on what was from the outset a fairly ambitious programme; starting off with a pre-event networking session at the Eko Hotel on Sunday the 4th of December, through three days of intense seminars, professional clinics, exhibition and creative showcases.
DP correspondents particularly found the session on Intellectual Property, Copyright and Creativity (co-ordinated by D’Talkshop) and the session on The Creative Economy in the Digital Space (co-ordinated by Paradigm Initiative) both of which held on Day 3, to be most instructive given how critical IP and Internet Technology issues have become to the existence and survival of creative enterprises globally. Discussions surrounding policy frameworks and challenges of the Nigerian creative entrepreneur were slow in gaining audience enthusiasm, but not so the evening events which included a music and fashion showcase, a film and television showcase and a closing gala that was well attended and headlined by Liyel Imoke- the Governor of Cross River State whose special assistant and Chairman of the planning committee for the Calarbar Carnival- Nzan Ogbe was beside himself with pride in presenting the Calabar Carnival as a successful example of public-private partnership working well to the benefit of the creative industries. At the Gala, David Higgs, country director for the British Council half jokingly commented that the Council looked forward to when the creative industries would no longer be refered to as an emerging economy, this is rather apt given that creative enterprise predates even the 16th century creation of the Idia mask in Nigeria, however it is the collective realization that ‘this creativity business is not just business, but big and serious business’ that is novelle, and not just in the Nigerian environment, as the British Council’s initiatives in Nigeria stem from an industry wide awakening that has spread from the UK to countries across Africa and other continents.
The main clincher for the organisers in our estimation however, was in their ability to harness the gains of having invested in entrepreneurship training for a large number of creative entrepreneurs over the past two years and taking the initiative to offer 50 of these emerging businesses free exhibition spaces at the expo, which were all taken up, resulting in a rich and diverse exhibition. Exhibitors engaged by DP revealed that their presence at the expo had afforded them an amazing opportunity for networking and promoting their creative businesses, the benefits of which they were reaping already through new business contacts. Of all the stands taken though, there was a preponderance of fashion / accessories related brands over and above subscribers from the architecture, design, software sub-sectors. These sub-sectors registered very little presence in comparison to the publishing, film & TV, and performing arts sub-sectors which does not indicate a dearth of practitioners in these fields, but rather a lack of awareness or lack of willingness to publicly exhibit. DP correspondents took time out to engage some of the fashion / accessories based exhibitors at the expo.
