The British Council and Contemporary And (C&) will offer a training programme for Culture journalists in Lagos. Deadline for submission: Monday, 19 January 2015

Nigeria has a developing arts and entertainment sector that currently contributes 1.2% to the GDP. This sector is however highly undervalued and struggles to receive the right amount of attention. The role of the general media, specifically the culture journalists, in drawing attention, appreciation and action towards this sector is important and cannot be over-emphasized. But how do culture journalists write a review about an art exhibition or a theatre performance? How is a review different from a portrait or an essay? How do you work efficiently with social media channels?

C& and the British Council will offer a writing workshop in the framework of the C& writing platform for Nigerian young journalists and writers in Lagos in March 2015 with the aim to:

• Facilitate the circulation of knowledge and experience among participants
• Improve culture reporting and critical writing practice particularly to attract a younger audience
• Provide the tools of how to write reviews, comments and essays within a given timeframe
• Mediate how to pitch topics to different media platforms
• Give insights into the processes of editing
• Set up a network of Nigerian art/culture journalists
• Create a sustainable mentoring and peer-to-peer programme that continues after the end of the workshop on the C& platform
• Promote exchange between Nigeria, the UK and other countries
• Link participants to a network of culture journalists from C& and the Royal African Society UK Offer participants the opportunity to publish their stories on Gateway Africa, Royal African Society UK’s  event listings and culture blog for promoting Africa

Participants will learn about different approaches to cultural reporting. They will develop skills and discover tools that can be used to make their arts reporting more contemporary, informed and engaging particularly for younger audiences.

Essential components of the programme include:

• 4 day workshop for cultural journalists on reporting the arts and facilitated by Nigeria and UK media specialists. Participants will be expected to write blog entries during the training, sometimes about the same topic from different perspectives.
• Attachments to local and international cultural organisations and cultural events. Cultural organisations and events will cut across the various art forms/sectors. Participants will deliver
• articles on cultural  organisations and events, write reviews of exhibitions and conduct interviews that will be published on C& as well as on new or existing media platforms for Nigerian arts and culture

In addition to the above, participants will get the opportunity to publish and work with C&’s experienced journalists and critics from all over the globe and benefit from a six-month online mentorship with the Royal African Society, UK.

Facilitators:

• Julia Grosse: Editor –in-Chief and Co-Founder of Contemporary And, journalist
• Aicha Diallo: Managing Editor of Contemporary And, Educationist and Cultural Producer
• Yvette Mutumba: Curator and Co-Founder of Contemporary And
• Bim Adewunmi: a UK based freelance journalist and blogger, specialising in popular culture, feminism and race. Bim blogs at www.yorubagirldancing.com and currently writes for The Guardian, UK
• Tolu Ogunlesi: Lagos based freelance journalist and Features Editor for NEXT, a daily Nigerian newspaper. In 2009 Tolu was awarded the Arts and Culture prize in the annual CNN Multichoice African Journalism Awards, as well as shortlisted for the inaugural PEN/Studzinski literary prize
• Obidike Okafor: Lagos based freelance journalist for magazines and online media organizations. Obidike was awarded art journalist of the year in 2009 by the Society of Nigerian Artists(SNA) Lagos Chapter, and was a nominee for art journalist of the year 2011 in the Nigerian Art Expo awards.
• Sean O’Toole: a writer and co-editor of CityScapes, a critical journal for urban enquiry. Sean lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Eligibility:

The participants will:

• Be current journalists including arts writers, critics and theorists, working for print and online magazines, newspapers, new media platforms, or any other form of media
• Have some journalistic/writing experiences
• Be fluent in  spoken and written  English

About C&:

Contemporary And (C&) is an online art magazine and a dynamic space for the reflection on and linking together of ideas, discourse and information on contemporary art practice from diverse African perspectives. C& is a rapidly growing cultural platform that lies at the intersection of contemporary art, art critic and digital media.

Application:

Application deadline is Monday, 19 January 2015

Interested candidates should submit a CV and a one page letter of motivation and/or a writing sample (1000 words max) to arts.nigeria@ng.britishcouncil.org

The British Council is committed to a policy of equal opportunity and welcomes applicants from all sections of the community. We work to ensure that people are not unjustifiably discriminated against on the basis of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion or belief, sexual orientation or any other irrelevant grounds.