CORA ‘35: Expanding the conversation with Podcast station launch, June 6
By Editor
THE Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) — Nigeria’s foremost consortium of writers, journalists, artists and literary enthusiasts, is officially 35 years old on Tuesday June 2, 2026. IT was founded and staged its first public outing on June 2, 1991. Though no official event was staged on the actual date, the leading advocate for the arts and culture of the nation and the continent, on Saturday June 6, 2026, at 4pm, will commemorate the milestone with the formal launch of its podcast station tentatively named Voices from the CORAVille.
The station is located in its secretariat office space at the CORA Library & Resource Centre, CORAVille, Freedom Park, Lagos Island. It is manned by its Programme Directorate peopled by its cohorts of associates and volunteers drawn from the CORA Youth Creative Club. The new Podcast initiative, which expands the organisation’s diverse range of activities, is designed to deepen conversations around the creative and cultural industries through insightful interviews, critical commentaries and engaging dialogues.
Courtesy a donation by its long-standing patron, supporter and professor of Culture Aesthetics with the Tisch School of Art, New York University, NY, and Vice Provost, New York University, Abu Dhabi, David Awam Amkpa, the podcast station aims to serve as a platform for thought leadership, knowledge sharing, and advocacy, helping to catalyse transformational change within the creative ecosystem.
CORA’s visionary founder and Secretary-General, Mr. Toyin Akinosho, will be the special guest on the podcast’s maiden edition, which will take listeners back to CORA’s formative years, when the dream was crystallising, and yet to take a firm grip. Right from the first Arts Stampede on June 2, 199, and other baby-step activities that took place in Akinosho’s residential courtyard in FESTAC Town, Lagos, the podcast launch will help relive memories and remember early contributors to the development of CORA.
Indeed, there is no other individual more suitable than Akinosho, who is expected to pull these strings of nostalgia, telling such epochal stories of an NGO that has grown steadily over the years, becoming home for cultural landscapists that have been instrumental in determining and shaping the country’s cultural horizon in the past 35 years.
CORA’s Program Chair, Mr. Jahman Anikulapo, described the double-barrel event as yet another milestone in the organisation’s history, when he said, “This double-barrel event is yet another history-making moment for CORA. It offers the opportunity to reflect deeply on CORA’s evolution in the last 35 years of active engagements in literacy campaign, cultural advocacy and the shaping and structuring of the Nigeria’s creative ecosystem. We invite everyone who has followed CORA’s journey from its infancy to this remarkable period. Writers, journalists, art enthusiasts, culture advocates, activists and members of the general public are welcome to join us in commemorating CORA’s 35th anniversary and celebrating its enduring contributions to the nation’s cultural landscape.”
The Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) was founded in June 1991 as a not-for-profit advocacy organisation to advance the cause of artistic and cultural production and expression. It was created and, has been over the decades managed by dedicated culture enthusiasts ‘with the intent of making Nigeria a prime destination for art and culture tourism.’ CORA was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission in Nigeria as a charity in 2007 as CORA Art & Cultural Foundation. In 2006, the organisation was a recipient of the Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development.
CORA has been instrumental to major policy shifts in the creative industries, the most recent of which is the ongoing revamp of the 50-year old National Theatre of Nigeria, the introduction and ongoing review of the Cultural Policy of Nigeria, the sustenance of the various culture parastatals of the federal government of Nigeria and the epochal launch of the Bring Back the Book initiative by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Voices from the CORAVille is another such rich addition in reshaping nIgeria’s cultural map.
CORA organises regular art events including live performance events and plenaries such as the quarterly CORA Art Stampede, the monthly CORA BookTrek, the periodic CORA Artists’ Forum, and the annual Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF), organised since 1999, and widely revered as the biggest of its type in the West Africa sub-region. These events constantly draw attendance from the creme of Nigeria’s art enthusiasts, practitioners and patrons and are regularly reported in the press.
Ideas shared at CORA organised forums have influenced major interventions in the literary, film, musical, visual and performative arts of Nigeria in the past three decades. CORA has consulted in the past for major organisations seeking to evaluate and revamp their CSR initiatives for the arts and culture sector.
