Open Call for Fashion Designers
KAFART 6: To Have and to Hold
The Kaduna Fashion and Art Festival (KAFART) invites fashion designers to apply for the sixth edition of the festival, themed To Have and to Hold.
This year's edition reflects on what persists, what is lost, what is reclaimed, and how we hold one another through times of uncertainty. Across cultures, histories, familial legacies, and our environment, the festival explores the objects, materials, practices, and memories that continue to shape who we are. Through contemporary art, fashion, and critical discourse, KAFART creates space for reflection, exchange, and new ways of imagining our shared futures.
Application categories
- Fashion Exhibition
- Fashion Presentation
- Pop-Up Shop
We are seeking designers whose practices engage with themes of identity, personal and collective history, memory, environment, familial legacies, repair, and postcolonial histories. We particularly welcome designers whose work demonstrates thoughtful engagement with materials, craft traditions, and storytelling.
Designers working with indigenous crafts, traditional textiles, recycled materials, second-hand clothing or thrift, wax prints, and other culturally significant materials and techniques are especially encouraged to apply.
Questions for designers
- What is truly ours?
- What has endured across generations?
- What has been forgotten, transformed, or reclaimed?
- What was introduced and has since become part of our cultural identity?
- How do we reconcile histories of division while honouring shared inheritances?
- What does it mean to preserve, repair, and pass knowledge from one generation to the next?
Rather than offering definitive answers, KAFART invites fashion to become a site of inquiry, where garments carry memory, materials embody history, and making becomes an act of preservation, resistance, and care.
Beyond presenting collections, participating designers will become part of a wider programme of exhibitions, conversations, workshops, performances, and public engagement, creating opportunities to connect with artists, curators, industry professionals, and diverse audiences.
We thank you for your interest in participating in the 6th edition of the Kaduna Fashion and Art Festival (KAFART). To be considered, please complete the application form and submit all required materials on or before 18 August 2026.
We look forward to discovering work that reflects the many ways we remember, inherit, reclaim, and hold our histories through fashion.
Frequently Asked Questions
The theme of the 6th edition is To Have and to Hold. It explores what persists, what is lost, what is reclaimed, and how we hold one another across cultures, histories, familial legacies, and the environment. It asks: What is truly ours? How do we reconcile divisions? What was introduced and later claimed as our own? How do we reclaim what rightfully belongs to us?
KAFART 6 will take place in Kaduna State, Nigeria, from 22–25 October 2026.
The open call is for fashion designers across Nigeria, the African region, and the diaspora.
Yes. Your practice must involve at least one of the following: indigenous crafts or textiles, recycled materials or second-hand clothing, or wax prints.
Not necessarily. Your body of work and design philosophy should demonstrate an existing engagement with broader themes such as identity, memory, legacy, repair, or postcolonial history, which you can then bring into conversation with To Have and to Hold.
Applicants must be at least 21 years old. The call is open to designers across Nigeria, the African region, and the diaspora.
Press interviews, discussions, networking sessions, and workshops are also part of the festival programme.
No. The Pop-Up Shop creates space for retail and sales may occur during the festival, but this is a secondary outcome. KAFART's primary purpose is meaningful visibility: placing work within curatorial conversations, connecting designers with audiences and industry professionals, and fostering critical dialogue and long-term relationships.
- Accommodation for designers based outside Kaduna
- Local travel
- Exhibition space
- Runway production
- Backstage support
- Display equipment
- Security
- Installation support
- Documentation
- Promotional features
- Accreditation
- Catering
- Collection storage
- Industry matching
- Programme access
- Certification
- Travel support where funding permits
Accommodation is provided specifically for designers based outside the host city of Kaduna.
Travel support is offered where funding permits. Full travel costs are not guaranteed for every designer.
Yes. Documentation and promotional features are part of the support KAFART provides to participating designers.
Questions? Reach us athello@kafartng.org