A hand-built city of clay will rise in Abuja this December as the inaugural Carnival of Stories brings Nigeria’s diverse cultures together in a five-day immersive celebration of architecture, tradition, art and inherited stories.
Scheduled for December 1–5, 2026, under the theme “This Is Nigeria: Chapter By Chapter,” the cultural festival is being created by JT Agency as an experiential platform designed to allow visitors to encounter Nigeria’s cultural heritage not as separate traditions, but as interconnected chapters of one national story.
At the centre of the festival will be a city constructed by hand from clay.
The concept draws on the long history of earth construction across Nigeria and explores how traditional building knowledge can offer contemporary lessons at a time when the construction industry faces increasing environmental pressures.
Rather than recreating the past as a museum exhibit, Carnival of Stories seeks to present traditional knowledge as a living practice one that can still be made, experienced and passed from one generation to another.
The festival is built around the idea that Nigeria’s story has often been experienced in fragments, with traditions and histories encountered separately according to region, community, generation and circumstance. Carnival of Stories brings these distinct identities together as chapters of a broader Nigerian narrative.
“With JT Agency, we have never been interested in simply telling Nigerian stories in the conventional way,” said Bayo Omoboriowo, CEO of JT Agency, Executive Producer and Lead Curator, Carnival of Stories.
“We keep asking: what else can this story become? How else can it be told?
Carnival of Stories is an extension of that thinking, building a clay city where our stories can leave the frame, become physical and immersive, and give people a new way to experience Nigeria.”
Visitors will enter the experience through the Zaure, a traditional space associated with hospitality and welcome, before moving through a series of cultural environments, including the Grove of Ancestors, Durbar Court and Court of Masks, and eventually arriving at the Impluvium, a space designed for reflection and stillness.
According to Nduwhite Ndubuisi Ahanonu, Co-Lead Curator of Carnival of Stories and Founder of the International Institute for Creative Development (IICD), the festival is grounded in the belief that cultural memory is inherited and shared.
“Every Nigerian carries a story they did not write alone, handed down at a doorway, sung over a drum, told under the moonlight,” Ahanonu said.
“Carnival of Stories gathers these inherited narratives into a single compound of clay and asks: what do we remember when we remember together? This is not a museum. It is a reliving.”
The festival also responds to what organisers describe as two growing cultural gaps: the increasing distance between younger Nigerians and the traditions that shaped earlier generations, and the limited opportunities for Nigerians to experience the cultures and histories of communities beyond their own.
Although Nigeria’s cultural heritage is widely celebrated, much of its knowledge and practice remains concentrated within the communities that preserve it.
Carnival of Stories aims to create a shared environment where visitors can encounter the histories, traditions, creative expressions and cultural practices of other Nigerian communities.
Over five days, visitors will experience programmes spanning history, food, spirituality, art and architecture, alongside cultural showcases led by custodians and practitioners connected to the traditions represented within the clay city.
Adeorike Aderibigbe, Creative Director and Project Lead, Carnival of Stories, described the festival as both a physical experience and a statement about Nigerian identity.
“Nigerian creativity has always been world-class.
You see it in our craftsmanship, in our visual language, in the way our art travels and is recognised far beyond our borders,” Aderibigbe said.
“But what makes us extraordinary isn’t just the talent, it is the range of it.
We are not one story told one way; we are hundreds of expressions of the same spirit.
Carnival of Stories exists to hold that range in one space, to show that our diversity isn’t something we manage or explain away, it is the very thing that makes our identity so rich.”
With its combination of traditional architecture, cultural storytelling, art and immersive experiences, Carnival of Stories is positioned as a new approach to experiencing Nigeria’s heritage allowing visitors to physically move through different chapters of the country’s cultural memory while exploring the connections between them.
