The African Artists’ Foundation is set to host the next edition of Talk Your Own Open Mic, a creative gathering designed to bring together voices across poetry, music, and performance.
The event will take place on April 25 at Freedom Park. It will offer a shared space for creatives, thinkers, and audiences to connect through storytelling and live expression.
Talk Your Own Open Mic continues to grow as a meeting point for emerging creatives. And it has been positioned as both a listening stage and a community-driven platform.
What Talk Your Own Open Mic Is About
Talk Your Own Open Mic is built as an open, inclusive platform for creative expression. It welcomes poets, writers, musicians, performers, and listeners who believe in the power of voice, storytelling, and community.
Creatives find the platform, beyond performance, a haven of creative dialogue, thoughtful engagement, and shared experiences.
For many emerging creatives, platforms like this often serve as early entry points into broader creative ecosystems, especially those exploring profitable creative business ideas that can turn artistic skills into structured income streams.
At its core, it is not just about being heard, but about being understood within a community that values expression and intentional listening.
Hosted by Sapphire F.I Kehinde, a curator and Creative Manager with the African Artists’ Foundation, who is focused on contemporary African storytelling and community-led cultural programming, Talk Your Own Open Mic is bridging the gap between creative expression and accessibility.
Why Events Like This Matter for Creatives
For many creatives, access remains one of the biggest barriers to growth. Events like Talk Your Own Open Mic provide a rare opportunity to not just connect with other creatives but also build confidence through audience interaction.
In an ecosystem where visibility and structure are often limited, these spaces become important entry points in helping creatives understand how to turn their creativity into income.
They also reflect a broader shift toward community-led platforms that support talent from the ground up, an essential part of building a more sustainable creative economy.
What to Expect at the Event
Attendees can expect a mix of:
- live performances across multiple creative disciplines
- storytelling and spoken word
- audience engagement and shared moments
The event also creates room for informal networking, allowing creatives to connect beyond the stage, begin to grow a creative business, and build relationships that can extend beyond the event itself.
Creative Money Africa’s Coverage Focus
Creative Money Africa will be on ground to document the event from a broader editorial perspective.
Our coverage will focus on:
- the real experiences of creatives within the space
- the challenges they are currently navigating
- the gap between creative expression and monetization
By capturing both performances and conversations, the goal is to explore how platforms like this contribute not just to visibility, but to the long-term growth of creative careers.
What This Means for the Creative Ecosystem
As the creative economy continues to expand, grassroots platforms like Talk Your Own Open Mic play a critical role in shaping how talent is discovered, nurtured, and developed.
They provide a foundation where creativity can exist in its raw form, before structure, packaging, and monetization are introduced.
For a lot of creatives, this is where the journey begins.
The Bottom Line
Talk Your Own Open Mic represents more than an event; it reflects the ongoing evolution of creative communities in Lagos and across Africa.
As conversations around creativity, opportunity, and income continue to grow, spaces like this remain essential in developing talent growth and visibility.
