Kuota Spacetime is an initiative that fuses Black and African speculative fiction (Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism), community engagement, participatory futures, and art thinking—a creative methodology that uses art-making to generate new ideas and solutions. Rooted in the concept of collective dreaming (Kuota translates in Swahili as to dream) is inspired by the need to reclaim and remember our narrative and identity in the global conversation about futures and other temporalities, Kuota Spacetime creates a dynamic space for imagining and co-creating alternative futures through workshops, artistic practices, alternative cinema, and storytelling. It invites communities to collectively explore, share, and envision new possibilities through artistic exploration and cultural reflection. Incorporating art thinking as a core methodology, Kuota Spacetime encourages participants to engage in non-linear, exploratory processes that challenge conventional ways of thinking.
The first iteration of Kuota took place at the shoreline of Oreta, Ikorodu, a community I have documented since early 2023. The residents of the shoreline (locally called Ago Egun) here have been displaced and had to move from previous locations, and their main source of livelihood, fishing on the lagoon, is increasingly threatened by sand mining and other urban activities, making their temporary place even more temporary.
During Kuota the Kids were given an introduction to Collage making.
Then given an intro to Sci-fi thinking and Afrofuturism via a short visual presentation and film screening of Afronauts by Nuotama Bodomo.
The film was projected on a cloth inside their community church, after we did minimal set up. This goes to the idea of rethinking space, experimenting, also a note to how cinema and art should not be confined to regular programming.
The second iteration was Ikorodu Futurism where we gathered for a day of communal dreaming and an ecology of listening. This event was a space to explore listening as resistance and to reflect on our environment as a shared responsibility, one that shapes us more deeply than we often realize. Through active listening, we sought to reconnect with our surroundings and imagine new ways of being in the world.
We engaged in listening exercises across various locations in Ikorodu, immersing ourselves in the soundscape of our surroundings. These moments of active listening sparked conversations about our experiences, how we might improve our realities, and how we could collectively craft alternate futures. A major theme that emerged was the impact of noise pollution on our collective well-being. We discussed how it disrupts our soundscape and explored potential changes to create healthier, more harmonious urban environments for the future.
The day concluded with a screening of short films and video art that offered visions of the past, alternate thinking and possibilities.
