We Want EWA To Become An Intrinsic Part of Lagos – Art Alade

Entertainment Week Africa (EWA) has just wrapped up its inaugural edition, having registered a total of 28,683 attendees from eight countries across 51 different industries.

Founder Deola Art Alade said the event is set to become an intrinsic part of the economic, intellectual and artistic landscapes of Lagos, Nigeria.

Themed ‘Close the Gap’, the six-day festival, which was held across multiple venues – Livespot360, Eko Hotel, EbonyLife Place, Alliance Francais and Heritage Place – popular for hosting various creative endeavours, set a robust foundation for pan-African creative mobility and global cultural exchange, serving as a blueprint for uniting talent, capital, policy and platforms in one ecosystem.

This was achieved through its varied programming, including film screenings, the Story Lab workshop, the Deal Room, the Hackathon, and a fashion platform, all of which were witnessed by local-based dignitaries, celebrities, and international creative brands.

Attention was placed on the upskilling and support of both rising and promising creative organisations and practitioners.

For instance, a four-day intensive Story Lab workshop, supported by Netflix, Amazon Prime, NdaniTV, and Africa Magic, saw eight out of 15 participants emerge with six polished loglines and pitch-ready story concepts. Four companies – Aktivate, FriendnPal, Growwr, and Sports Reel – identified as scalable, attracted investor interest in The Deal Room. In contrast, creative tech companies, including Musetter (music), Owambe (fashion), and Alaba (music), won a two-day challenge that tasked 10 organisations with building and rapidly iterating a product.

On a less competitive note, attendees were entertained by a screening of critically acclaimed Nigerian films, such as Bankulli’s ‘Chronicles of Afrobeat’, Etim-Effiong’s controversial film ‘The Herd’, the Idris Elba-directed and Mo Abudu-produced ‘Dust to Dream’, and ‘Mama Nike & Magazine Dreams’.

A fashion platform featuring 120 fashion brands welcomed 10 emerging designers from the EWA Runway Coterie project, including Korede James, Dust of the Earth, Nex by Necca, Josh Amor, PK Crochet, Estaz, David Black, Bernard Samuel and Sevon Dejana, with their forward-thinking interpretations of contemporary African style.

Arguably, EWA reached a milestone of 35 panel discussions, 22 workshops, 20 masterclasses, and 93 film screenings, spanning themes such as distribution pipelines, creative entrepreneurship, emerging technology, youth culture, and cross-border mobility.

“Entertainment Week Africa represents a week of celebration, partnership and progress. By ‘Closing the Gap’, we are not just building bridges, we are creating highways for ideas, talent and investments to flow freely between Nigeria and the UK,” said British Deputy High Commissioner, Johnny Baxter.

“We set out to do something particular, with the theme ‘Close the Gap’,” said Livespot360 Managing Director, Tiwa Medubi, “bring talent, capital, policy and platforms into the same room – not in theory, but in practice.

“Across every lab, panel, showcase, screening and performance, one thing was clear: the gap between potential and reality is closing, because people are doing the work.”