Entries open for 2023 LIMCAF as N6.4 million up for grab

• New Category Prizes For Women, People With Disability, Young Artists

Rising from a meeting recently, which aimed to express its appreciation, especially to main sponsors, MTN Foundation and Ford Foundation, as well as the patrons, whose continued interventions, support and encouragement have taken the yearly Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF) to new and more impactful levels, Chairman Elder K. U. Kalu and the entire board of the initiative have said Nigeria’s biggest and longest running visual art festival is now offering an overall winner’s prize of N1 million, effective from the 2023 festival’s gala and award night due to hold on Saturday, October 28, 2023.

This year’s competition is themed, Fix It.

On reason for the theme, the festival’s Executive Director, Kevin Ejiofor, said, “the world is passing through unprecedented challenges and we should all arise to this by acting our parts. Humanity appears to be at critical stage of launching into the future, it calls for holistic response for all to ‘Fix It’.”

The festival is open to all artists, who will not be more than 35 years on October 28, 2023 and who have been residing, studying and working in Nigeria for at least five years prior the afore mentioned date.

The deadline for submission of entries, which is already opened and could be sourced from www.lifeinmycityartsfestival.org, is May 31.

Art Director, Dr. Ayo Adewunmi, announced that all other LIMCAF prizes have been similarly increased. For example, the main category awards for the Best in Painting, Sculpture, Textile, Ceramics and Graphics, which used to attract a prize of N250, 000 will now earn N500,000 each for their producers.

New category awards have also been introduced. These are: Most Creative Female Entry, Most Promising Female Young Artist, and a Special Prize for Persons With Disability.

Adewunmi said: “These new prize categories have been introduced to bring LIMCAF in line with international best practice, where females; the younger generation and persons with disability are provided special incentives to practice and participate fully in every area of human activity.”

He explained, “in addition to the new special categories all the other category prizes are still open for the females to compete for.”

The arts director said: “In addition to all these, there are still the endowed prizes, including the Justice Anthony Aniagolu Prize, which now earns N300,000, up from the previous N150,00. The other endowed prizes, including the Dr. Pius Okigbo, the Barrister Mfon Usoro and the VinMartin Ilo Prizes remain the same for now.

“However, a new endowment is the Fidelia Okoroafor Prize for the Most Promising Young Female Artist, which will earn a young person not older than 18, N200,000.”

These mean that the overall total of prizes on offer now stands at N6.4million naira annually, a more than 100 per cent increase.

“This does not include several other opportunity offers, such as residences and international travel including especially the all-expenses-paid participation in the Dak’Art Biennale for the top six winning artists in each year,” he said.

LIMCAF was founded in Enugu, in 2007 by Chief Robert Oji, CEO and founder of Rocana Nigeria Ltd., a publishing and outdoor advertising agency, whose aim was to economically empower aspiring young artists and create avenues for the advancement of their careers through interaction with established artists, scholars, collectors and gallery owners.

His other aim was to raise awareness and interest in art, so that young people graduating from the several schools offering tertiary education in art can find that art is not only a noble profession but also an economically sustainable enterprise.

Since its founding, the festival has held every year except for the COVID- 19 year, 2020. In those 16 years, about 4,000 young artists have participated in the festival, earning a total of about N19 million in prizes, from the Overall Prize through the Category Prizes, to the Endowed and the Consolation Prizes.

In addition, nearly N28 million has been spent on 22 winning artists from the 2018, 2019 and 2021 Festivals, sponsored on the international travel experience an participation in the Dak’Art Biennale, courtesy of Emeritus Professor El Anatsui, a Patron of LIMCAF.

LIMCAF’s workshops for art teachers and secondary school children taking in 100 young students with their teachers and coordinators every year have been designed to deepen the grassroots focus of the Festival, which sees art as a strong social development tool for young people in our society.

Adewunmi said the workshops would not only continue, but that LIMCAF will widen its net to take in many more talented young persons in the expectation that sponsorship and public support will grow, along with the appreciation of the mission and vision of the initiative.