CAVIC To Bridge Nigeria’s Arts-Technology Divide – Agbese

A four-day pre-festival workshop organised by the Creative Art and Visual Imagery Centre (CAVIC) has brought together artists, software engineers and creative technologists in Abuja to help bridge Nigeria’s long-standing arts-technology divide ahead of the CAVIC Festival of Creativity and Technology, scheduled for November 5 to 7.

The workshop, held at the CAVIC Centre, Wuse, Abuja, explored how technology can enhance artistic expression, generate new ideas and create opportunities for collaboration across Nigeria’s creative sector.

At the workshop, CAVIC festival convener Philip Agbese Jnr said the initiative was conceived from a desire to challenge the separation between the arts and technology in Africa. He recalled that when discussions around the concept began about five years ago, organisers questioned why African societies continued to treat art and technology as competing priorities, particularly in funding, innovation and economic development.

“At CAVIC, when we started having these conversations, we didn’t have a blueprint.

We had a conviction,” Agbese said.

According to him, the workshop demonstrated that artists and technology practitioners could develop ideas and projects that neither group might achieve independently.

“We saw people from different backgrounds—artists, creatives, software engineers and techies—with no obvious reason to be in the same room,” he said. “But they came together, started having great conversations that wouldn’t have happened elsewhere, and out of that began building ideas and things they couldn’t have done alone.”

Agbese described the experience as evidence that a new creative ecosystem was beginning to emerge. He said he wanted the CAVIC Festival of Creativity and Technology to become an event that creatives and global partners deliberately plan their calendars around.

“I want the CAVIC Festival of Creativity and Technology to stop being something people discover and start being something people plan their year around,” he said.

He also called for greater involvement from banks, corporations, international festivals and other organisations that recognise culture and technology as drivers of future development.

Dr. Lanre Phillips, a business consultant and facilitator, said the workshop had exposed him to a model of creative collaboration he had not previously encountered in Nigeria or Africa.

“I’ve been very impressed. I appreciate the opportunity, and I think it can get better—and it will get better,” Phillips said.

He added that increased recognition could lead to more partners, participants and collaborations capable of producing projects beyond the festival.

Visual artist and creative technologist Marta Verde Baqueiro said participants brought diverse backgrounds and artistic experiences to the workshop, noting the strong spirit of collaboration among them. She described the initiative as showcasing the commitment of artists and technologists to come together and create meaningful work at the CAVIC festival.

Eva Barta Martin, cultural attaché at the Embassy of Spain, said the workshop demonstrated the value of bringing creative practitioners and technology experts together. She noted that exchange between both fields could create new possibilities for the creative economy while encouraging further partnerships around innovation and culture.

“Arts, it’s an amazing thing in Nigeria. Technology is coming, but it’s coming all over the world. It’s here already, and we have to interact and find ways of creating these synergies that I think are the future,” she said.

Participants Titilayo Oloidi,a multidisciplinary artist, and Kolawole Falade, a spoken-word artist and theatre practitioner, said they discovered the programme through Instagram and were fascinated by how technology could be integrated into artistic practice. They said the knowledge gained would encourage them to explore technological tools to improve their creative output.

For CAVIC, the workshop offered a glimpse of a creative ecosystem where the boundaries between artists and technologists are becoming less rigid—and where collaboration may prove as important as individual talent.