By Yemi Adebisi
The 2014 edition of the Lagos Art and Book Festival (LABAF), which begins on Friday November 14, through Sunday November 16, has been dedicated in honour of Prof. Wole Soyinka @ 80.
Activities would include a Book Trek, creative writing workshop, and a publisher’s forum. The Book Trek will take place at British Council in Ikoyi, Lagos, designed to ignite a passion for reading among children, young adults and anyone with a suspicion for books.
It will be followed by a one-day creative writing workshop organised by British Council for aspiring writers. The final pre-festival event is the Publisher’s Forum. The discussions will be focused on cutting operational costs and making profits by taking advantage of the marketing opportunities e-media presents.
Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) and Goethe Institute will facilitate the forum. The forum will lead into main festival events at Freedom Park (Old Colonial Prison), by Broads Street, Lagos.
The theme, Freedom & the Word, will host a series of robust conversations through which the audience would appreciate the place of historical narratives in city making and nation building.
On Friday, November 14, Harvard don and foremost critic of Soyinka’s work, Professor Biodun Jeyifo, will deliver the keynote address on Soyinka’s contribution to the quest for Freedom and Justice for all people. The speech will set off discussions on Soyinka’s non-fiction and its impact on freedom and nation building.
The second session is tagged Soyinka: the public intellectual. Prof. Chidi A. Odinkalu, Chairman of the Nigeria Human Rights Commission (NHRC), will set the tone for discussions with an address on Soyinka the great defender of freedom of speech.
In a communiqué signed by chairman, CORA Art and Cultural Foundation, Jahman Anikulapo, he stressed that this edition would be a memorial for a number of reasons.
“This year marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; the 20th anniversary of South African democracy; and the 15th anniversary of Nigeria’s 4th Republic. These milestones remind us of paths humanity must never again tread.
“They also suggest that we appreciate the writers who used their art to protest a system of suppression or provided comic relief in a climate of oppression.
“The importance of reading their books should never be lost on us, as James Kelman – Booker winner 1994 – said, ‘one of the few remaining freedom we have is the blank page. No one can prescribe how we should fill it,’” he said.
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