1999 – 2019
In 1999 a loose group of creative individuals drawn from architecture, art, photography, design and fashion came together under the moniker
CIA – Creative Intelligence Agency to talk shop and do ‘something’ for the impending millennium. We met, we ate, we moaned, we posited and we did. With hyper-inquisitive students in tow, we set out to reshape design perceptions, and rejig the status quo. Lagos 2000 a resource document re-determining Central Lagos, and containing proposals like Freedom Park (realized 10 years later) a transport Interchange, predictive use of the flyovers, was our collective response. Glendora tagged this collaboration as The Century Project and below is the article. If Einstein’s quote. ‘Creativity is intelligence having fun’ is true, rest assured we have few dull moments.
The same 1999 saw us visit Demas Nwoko’s Dominican Chapel in Ibadan, Oshogbo Groves, conduct numerous design workshops in Lagos and Ife. Not content with our Nigerian borders we went further afield, organized Euro-Tour 2000 and took 15 students of architecture to 6 European countries, over 27 days to get up close and personal with the art, architecture and culture of 17 cities. Not bragging but we lived the European dream, eating bucatini in Florence, paella in Barcelona, disco dancing on the midnight train from Brussels to Girona , almost getting electrocuted in Milan, definitely lost in Venice, sketching the Sagrada Familia, being blown away by the Picasso Museum, Smithfield’s Market, Parc la Villette, Corbs Villa Savoye, Rem Koolhaas’s office in Rotterdam & Dele Kuku seminal architect-artist in Brussels. Phew!
In the year of the Millennium we gave a talk at Africas: The Artist & The City, Barcelona. We hosted the Lagos Protocol Meeting of the Cultural Mapping Initiative by Ola-Dele Kuku and presented at the Lagos Platform, Documenta 11 in 2012, 2016 met us at Bozar, Brussels delivering our views at Conflict Culture, a colloquium on new architectural frontiers.
Roll on 21 years from inception and the CIA is rebirthed as an NGO, Cultural Intellectual Association. The CIA is not me, it’s not you it’s US! In July 2019 we kicked off with a series of Fab-Labs; Fabulous Laboratory of Ideas, the 1st of which co-produced with 9H DesignTalks, titled No Way! was cathartic expose of rejected design bids. The August Fab-Lab Music + Me investigated the use of music as the basis of our visual art endeavours, and in September our Fab-Lab Word Up! explored the spoken word artist and poet within us. October’s Fab-Lab Visual Storytelling used photography to underpin our innate ability to tell stories. Decembers Fab-Lab We cook, We talk, We eat! was a festive romp of food cooked by us, & eaten by us alongside open discourse, spoken word, choreographed dance and a demonstration of made in Nigeria Friction Furniture.
Apart from Fab-Labs, we have CIA Cells. Each Cell is driven by the originator and assisted by any body interested in realising the Cell Content. Current Cells include Drainage Solutions to Lagos Island, setting up a Design School, Research, and Archiving (digital cataloguing and e-mapping of select buildings of merit,) and a biennial online and print magazine with rotating editorship this edition me, next edition you. In all we do students are the integral grunts that make the things we do have greater societal meaning. They are after all the next generation. We get better together!
