SUPPORT & CONNECT 2023: SELECTED PROJECT

Support & Connect 2023 Selected Entries ©Cécilia Ettlin, Boju Boju 2022

The Goethe-Institut Nigeria supports Nigerian artists and cultural experts in implementing their projects.

For the past years, the Goethe-Institut Nigeria has supported a wide range of projects created and implemented by Nigerian artists and initiatives in various art forms: music, contemporary dance, photography, films (documentary), theatre, visual arts and many more. Goethe-Institut Nigeria also supports artists, who are invited to festivals or cultural projects in Germany or on the African continent but do not have enough funding to join.

We regard this support as a very crucial and important one in order to give young and upcoming artists in the cultural landscape of Nigeria a chance to be heard and seen.
The call is open for artistic and cultural initiatives from all parts of the country.
This year, the Support and Connect initiative is supporting projects with funds to the tune of 5.000 Euros. We also continue with the sustainability grant (i.e. recurring projects that already had funding from the Goethe-Institut) with maximum budget of 2.000 Euros).

1. Jeun soke (By Omokeko Olufela)

Support & Connect 2023 © ©Jeun soke  Support & Connect 2023 ©Jeun soke
This project is an art intervention that is meant to fill a vacuum in people's understanding of food history, food mapping and cross-cultural interchange. The plan is to utilize food as an artistic medium to question, understudy, experiment and engage with people's past and present. 

Considering the forces of environmental degradation, social insecurity, unstable economic policies and unformed cultural transition; threatening human knowledge, livelihood, and aiding the gradual extinctions of heritable ways of living,  thus affecting the food culture in urban space, evidence in the expansion of (=)quick meals spots, (✓)fast-living styles and (+)post-electronic world/ lifestyles in cities that (-)discouraged the desire, consumption and value for local and indigenous cuisine culture. 

To preserve this culture, we are making a museum MOBILE FOOD MUSEUM, LAGOS.  This is an adaptive exhibition structure that will invite visitors to eat, smell, learn, pro-learn (progressive learning)  and interact with food; either through physical or non-physical experience, a medium to preserve or understand that certain food culture existed with or without dialogue,  because it is one thing for people to know that a food exists and it is another thing to create space for experience and conversation. 

In collaboration with the project primary stakeholders (Spiritualists, Architects, Food technologists and Young farmers Clubs) in Lagos State Secondary Schools, we shall journey on a research tour to six (6) South-Western States —using experiential and descriptive research methodology, with a collective keen objective to elevate culture, agriculture, food security, improved nutrition and save the planet.

2. Fortunate traveller (By Tope-EniObanke Adegoke and Rebecca Jones)
Support & Connect 2023 © © Fortunate traveller  Support & Connect 2023 © Fortunate traveller
Fortunate Traveller is Nigeria’s foremost literary travel journal, committed to publishing and promoting nonfictional, itinerant narratives. We believe in travel, and its transformational and enlightenment value, when combined with a responsibility to represent people and places ethically and thoughtfully. Our contributors come from all over the world, with a majority from Nigeria and other African countries, since one of our aims is to provide a platform for early career African travel writers, given the historical under-representation of African writers in the travel writing genre.

In Government Pikin: An Anthology of NYSC Travels Vol 1, we have developed the talents and profiles of new travel writers.

We are focusing on The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme because of its contribution to national building, whether it is real or imagined. The scheme was created by the federal government of Nigeria to foster national unity amidst the country’s ethnic, linguistic and religious divides. Since 1973, after Nigeria’s civil war, tertiary institution graduates under the age of 30, have been participating in a compulsory year of service to the nation. They are usually posted to cities and towns far from their state of origin. The aim is for Nigerian youth to experience and appreciate other people’s cultures in a nation where there are more than 250 ethnic groups. Amongst the objectives of the scheme are to remove prejudices, eliminate ignorance and confirm at first hand the similarities among Nigerians of all ethnic groups, to develop ties among Nigerian youths, and to accelerate the national economy.

Since the creation of the program people who have gone to serve Nigeria have stories of all kinds to tell: some beautiful, others thrilling, many humorous, and a few others, rather undesirable. These stories have much to tell us about serving our nation, about contemporary Nigeria and what it means to be a young Nigerian, and the experience of being away from home in an unfamiliar place.

Fortunate Traveller seeks to grow its journal with these experiences and long-term sustainability by funding both a year of new writing in the journal, and the publication of a new anthology of Nigerian travel writing on the NYSC scheme. This exciting project will both nurture and showcase the talents of a new generation of Nigerian travel writers and allow Fortunate Traveller itself to develop as a journal.


3. Here was once waters (James Notin)

SUPPORT AND CONNECT 2023 © © James Notin SUPPORT AND CONNECT 2023 © James Notin
Transhumance migration has positioned a country as multilayered as Nigeria at its brink, leading to religious clashes, increased agitations for secession or restructuring of the country. In recent times, there are the primary clashes between South-Western Agrarian communities and the Pastoral Northerners.

Across West Africa, this similar pattern can be seen. In the increasing demand for safety against invasion of farmland by herds, often omitted is the cause that necessitated a deeper migration just a few years back.
The region of West Africa is strong losing one of its most important water sources, of such is the Lake Chad that have served communities across four countries namely: Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger; due to global warming and climate change, making it extremely difficult for pastoral farmers to get enough resources for their herds during the dry (no rain) season.
This lack of resources has further yielded more in favour of conflict; banditry, clashes between tribes and cultural loss, for communities who for ages have developed their needs in relation to the abundance of the lake.

Here Was Once Water is a research-based installation and performance session which seeks to become closer to the firsthand experience of the local communities bordering the Lake Chad. By also simulating the environment within the installation, the project will teleport the public sense organs to experience the reality of people in an intensifying rate.


4. Art for the People: African National Cinemas 1950s-2000s (By Monangambee Ese Joy Emmanuel)

Support & Connect 2023 © ©Art for the People Support & Connect 2023 ©Art for the People
Art for the People: African National Cinemas 1950s-2000s is a series of film screenings (August - November 2023) which look at the emergence of “national” policies for cinema production in the era of decolonization movements and later postcolonial independent states. Through these screenings, Monangambee aims
at showcasing how different countries approached the role of cinema in creating a sense of national identity and postcolonial consciousness. We are specifically looking at four target countries: Nigeria, Sudan, Cameroon and
Mozambique because they give an entry point into very different colonial (French, British, Portuguese), cultural and political contexts. For each target the country we will be partnering with a local arthouse cinema organization. The screenings will be physical in Lagos and Ibadan and available online worldwide via our website. 
 

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