The 11th Ake Book and Arts Festival held recently, with over 1,000 writers, poets, musicians, actors, filmmakers, artistes and thinkers celebrating creativity.

The four-day event had panel discussions, book chats, poetry, music and others.

The yearly event is organised by Book Buzz Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, with the aim to promote literacy, especially among children of school-going age, as well as to develop reading tools and resources to support schools in the creation of reading spaces to organise events and festivals that promote literacy and reading culture.

As part of Sterling Bank’s ‘Enriching lives’ Initiative, the institution has continued to sponsor the festival for many years and still counting.

While Director of the Festival, Lola Shoneyin, chose the theme, ‘Blood Ties’, to explore the complexities of experiences both blood relations and acceptance in relationships founded on friendship and shared experiences, many of the submitted poems and stories for the festival, touched on the emotional scope of so many family.

Among the books chats were Daughter in Exile by Bisi Adjapon and Lucky Girl by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu.

Coincidently, all discussed their ties with family, the influence it has on them and the difference between how they were raised by their parents and what the outlook of their peers to family was like in the West, the culture shock they experienced and the advent effect it had on them positively or negatively.

Behind-the-scene footage of Femi Adebayo’s film titled, Jagun Jagun, was screened and it explored the themes of love and sacrifice, in addition to Yoruba traditional religion, culture and the much deserved global audience Nigerian films are attracting.

The first panel discussion was on African women in publishing, especially those who have done some great works in different parts of the world.
It discussed the peculiar challenges what women encounter in the publishing industry, how to overcome them and how to nurture the next generation of women publishers.

Shoneyin established the dearth of publishing houses, which has led to non-functional libraries, while the existing ones are full of text books.
She attributed these problems to military era when many publishing companies left resulting to the real damage done to the publishing industry.

Shoneyin encouraged writers to start publishing at home instead of going abroad to streghten the few publishing houses that are just coming back to the business.
A discussion on the impact of Artificial Intelligent, what it poses to the creative community and how the sector can position itself to exploit AI’s benefits on the African continent, was serious. But the one thing it took away from many afterall, is the fear and believe that AI will kill the creative industry.

Ama G. Dadson said AI would offer opportunity to augment human intelligence in new profound and interesting ways such as transcribing speech in one language and reproducing a synthesised version of it in another language.
For Anita Oboigbe, “it will redefine creativity.”
Bash Amuneni said, that “AI is here to further creativity and give it more possibility in expression.”

Abdulkareem Baba Aminu said, “AI art can be accepted as true art but that human arts has something deeper than creativity, it has soul, an expression of God’s glory and a piece of heaven in it which machines can not draw on.”

Shoneyin said as a publisher, there are many important stream of income that African publishers are not pursuing, but to do so, they need to be trained and make sure they improve the standard of their works, so, they can show their talents too.

Discussions around gender based violence were not left behind.
They believe that gender issues continue because there is no serious punishment to the offenders and until there are consequences such as, when you kill, you will be killed, no matter the circumstances.

A sense of entitlement is seen to be one of the reasons for spousal abuse. Apart from encouraging parents to raise their male children properly with the right mind set about how women should be perceived and treated, men who get abused were also encouraged to speak up and not be ashamed.

Group Chief Marketing Officer of Sterling Hold Co, Mr. Dapo Martins, said, “the festival, which is built upon the foundation of creativity and knowledge, embodies the very essence of what Sterling Bank stands for,” remarking that, “at Sterling, we are not just bankers; we are agents of change, driven by the belief that knowledge and creativity can transform lives.”

Shoneyin, who commended the dependable partners of the festival and a handful of wonderful new sponsors, said: “At the Book Buzz Foundation, we work tirelessly to promote culture and the arts in Nigeria and on the African continent. So, we are truly grateful for the generosity of all the organisations that share our passion and have encouraged us to keep going.”