My studio practice is concerned with building cultural infrastructure in Nigeria. I've spent a decade building technology companies, and the studio is where I put that experience to work on society.
Technology has created enormous wealth, and we've learned how to build, sell and deliver software across the world, but the deeper problems are harder and far more human: political organisation, physical community, education, culture. Without that foundation, even the most magical tools deliver utility without transformation.
My practice is built around three core ideas.
1. Physical infrastructure: spaces for making
Land and space are scarce, and this makes organisation difficult. Ideas only sharpen in proximity. Thinkers and makers need rooms to work in, places to argue, and infrastructure that lets ideas talk to each other.
The work: Makerspace, a fabrication and community space in Lagos Island. For the past couple of months I've been working with Tushar, Toke and Tolu to build out a ceramics, 3D printing and electronics centre with public programming, and to develop it into a commercially viable model for creative infrastructure.
2. People: education and growth
Nigeria has one of the youngest populations in the world, and it's not clear where that's heading. Both the government and private institutions have to build toward the future in parallel.
The university is the most fertile ground for that kind of future-building. It holds the single biggest concentration of people willing to learn and challenge themselves, closest to the tools that make them productive.
The work: Axiom, a fellowship I co-founded with Ridwan and Fuad that finds and rewards excellence in Nigerian universities. Still very early, but the goal is to identify exceptional people and platform them. The belief is that supporting these people and presenting them as models can shift culture and give others something to follow — a contribution toward the kind of workforce that produced the excellence we've seen in tech.
3. Stories: animation at scale
Stories move the world. Every civilisation is built on ideas and fictions passed down through generations. Over the last decade, Nigerian music has travelled further than anything else we make, carrying stories of Nigerian excellence that contend directly with narratives of failure.
Storytelling is branding and organisation. Stories are how a community holds itself together. Animation is storytelling that can scale.
We have the tools, the stories and the people. Now we need systems.
The work: E Dey Happen, an animated series I've been developing with Eris, Ivie and Folu — investing in the show, learning how the industry works and what role software and capital can play in building a sustainable animation practice out of Nigeria.
Follow our work at journal.moonlight.ng