Festival management training in West Africa

Just some of the feedback we received from the 44 festival managers who attended the training at the British Council offices in Accra in May 2019. This is the second edition on which Walk the Plank has worked, and the overall programme has now welcomed representatives from all 36 Nigerian states, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Gambia and Senegal – including academics from four universities.

Since they first met in Lagos six months earlier, the group had taken part in six webinars and done their homework – from writing a new marketing plan to refining a sponsorship pitch.

In the first session in Ghana, we asked them to reflect on any successes since we had last met. They had reshaped their festivals, recruited volunteers, grown their networks, increased their income generation, attracted new audiences, even got the governor of their state signed up to a vision of sustainable cultural tourism. By the end of their feedback, we were all buzzing from what they had achieved!

This training is intense – aiming to cover the basics of festival management in just six days, while leaving time for individual stories and specific queries. It’s only been possible through a partnership forged by the British Council in West Africa that attracted investment from Nigeria’s Ministry of Culture & Tourism; and making links with West African universities, which we hope will embed this training into future undergraduate courses, were a key ambition. The academics’ study visit to the UK in February 2019, organised by Walk the Plank’s former Learning Director Alexis Johnson, certainly fired them up : they all reported that their universities were pressing ahead with plans inspired by the courses they had seen at the University of Salford, Birkbeck (University of London), London South Bank University, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh) and Edinburgh Napier University.

One of the emergent discourses for the training was the idea of values – why we do it and who we do it for; and value – how to increase the impact of this work and articulate the value of both traditional cultural festivals and contemporary arts festivals. And we wrestled with the question of how to create the conditions where both can not only flourish but also nurture each other: how we might sustain traditional ceremonies and rites of passage by engaging the talents and energies of young people; or how we might connect the West African diaspora, including those who have left their villages for the anonymity of urban life, with the contemporary voices of artists, writers, poets and dancers whose work can create a powerful sense of belonging or identity, or an opportunity for reflection on the worlds we wish to make today and tomorrow, as well as celebrating yesterday.

Thanks to trainers Patrick Garety (Lake of Stars), Lola Shoneyin (Ake Book Festival) and Alexis Johnson (Walk the Plank), and guest speakers including Ebenezer Bentum (Asa Baako) and Angela Chappell (Arts Council England).