By Olusegun Obisanya
The Hope Collective Ltd/Gte (THC) has announced its partnership with the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture (LSCAC) to host the maiden edition of the Rhythm of Lagos Cultural Festival, a landmark cultural celebration designed to showcase the vibrancy, creativity, and unity of Lagos through arts, dance, food, and heritage.
According to a statement signed by the Director of THC, Mr. Samson Oluwatosin Agboola, the festival will be a year-long cultural movement spread across 100 cities in Lagos State. It will feature over 500,000 residents participating in live shows, creative workshops, culinary exhibitions, and performances that promote Lagos as a melting pot of Nigerian culture.
The initiative will also launch a youth-driven creative competition titled “My Arts My Culture Creation Competition”, which seeks to engage art students from universities and senior secondary schools in producing over 1,000 new Yoruba-inspired artifacts. The competition will run from November 2025 to February 2026, encouraging participants to reinterpret traditional cultural motifs into modern, functional art pieces across fashion, sculpture, digital art, musical instruments, and scripts.
Mr. Agboola noted that the festival is projected to attract 5,000 physical participants via digital check-ins, engage 5,000 youths in art, dance, and culinary activities, and register at least 1,000 original artifacts. The initiative is also expected to generate over ₦50 million in artifact sales, which will serve as seed funding for future youth development programs in 2027.
The Rhythm of Lagos Cultural Festival is structured around four core pillars — Create, Celebrate, Preserve, and Unite. Create: The “My Arts My Culture” competition will kickstart the festival, providing a creative platform for young artists to “forge tomorrow’s heritage today.” Celebrate: Families, youths, and tourists will enjoy 100 live shows across 20 local government areas of Lagos, featuring 5,000 performers and diverse cultural showcases.
Preserve: THC will document the entire festival journey through documentaries and a permanent online digital museum that will feature the best of 2025–2026 creations.
Unite: The event will highlight inter-tribal dances and culinary fusions, fostering cross-cultural friendships and deepening unity among Lagos residents and visitors.
The festival will unfold in three major phases. Phase 0 — My Arts My Culture Creation Competition — will run from late November 2025 to February 2026, featuring a ₦5 million prize pool in cash and gifts. Phase 1, the Inaugural Festival Show, is slated for the first quarter of 2026, and will feature live announcements of competition winners, exhibitions of top student artifacts, and the launch of a dance competition and “Naija Flavors” culinary zone.
The Main Festival (Phase 2) will run from the first quarter through December 2026, featuring 100 shows in 100 cities, each lasting between three to six hours and celebrating Yoruba rhythm and other Nigerian cultural expressions.
Finally, Phase 3, the Grand Finale tagged “Lagos Unity Carnival,” will take place in December 2026. The event will parade the 100 student-created artifacts, crown national dance and culinary champions, and include a live auction of limited-edition artifacts to fund youth scholarships.
Mr. Agboola described the festival as a transformational project designed to reawaken cultural pride among Lagosians and Nigerians at large. “The Rhythm of Lagos is not just a festival—it is a movement that celebrates who we are, unites our communities, and creates a platform for the next generation of cultural innovators,” he said.
He added that through the collaboration with the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture, THC aims to make Lagos the cultural capital of Africa by promoting inclusive, creative, and sustainable cultural engagement among its citizens
