Publishing
ACTS!

Publishing ACTS! emerged from A Whitespace Creative Arts (AWCA) Foundation's ongoing collaboration with iranti press, whose work explores publishing as a cultural, social, and political practice. Together, the partnership seeks to expand how people engage with ideas, transforming research, writing, and publishing into participatory public experiences that invite collective reflection and action.

Building on the foundations laid by Manifesto Seeds, Publishing ACTS! challenged conventional understandings of what publishing can be. Rather than treating publishing solely as the production of books, journals, or printed materials, the month-long workshop explored how ideas might be published through space, performance, material experimentation, and public intervention.

Drawing from archival traces of twentieth-century Pan-African festivals and manifesto traditions, participants engaged with historical texts as living documents that could be expanded, rewritten, manipulated, and reimagined for contemporary realities. The programme asked how we might write the worlds we wish to inhabit and what forms publishing can take when it becomes a tool for speculation, critique, and collective imagination.

Throughout the workshop, participants carried out site-specific experiments across Lagos, exploring collaborative modes of authorship that embraced multiplicity rather than consensus. The project encouraged participants to question who gets to write the future, how cultural narratives are constructed, and what becomes possible when publishing is understood as an active social practice rather than a finished product.

As producers, AWCA worked alongside iranti press, artists, and cultural practitioners to create the conditions for experimentation and collaboration. The team coordinated programme delivery, participant engagement, and public-facing activities, helping transform abstract ideas into meaningful experiences.

The result was a project that expanded the boundaries of publishing itself. Publishing ACTS! demonstrated that ideas can live not only in texts, but in actions, encounters, and collective experiences, creating new ways for communities to imagine and shape the futures they desire.