The Ma showcase - accra
OPEN CALL
Image Credit: Cianeh A. Kpukuyou - @askphotos_
Black Females in Architecture AND Ɛdan Ghana JOINTLY Invite artists, designers and creatives to participate in An upcoming SHOWCASE IN THE HEART OF accra, exploring the labour of women IN THE CITY.
Open Call: Women’s Ways of Knowing in the City
Submission Deadline: October 24, 2025
Notification of Selection: November 15, 2025
Project Activation: December 2025 – January 2026
Are you an artist, designer, or creative? You Are Invited!
This open call and showcase grew out of a public workshop hosted in Accra in August, where women urbanists, designers, architects, and creatives came together to explore how women’s ways of knowing shape the city.
We invite contributions to our participatory project, which honours women’s forms of knowledge and everyday ways of shaping the city. Works may take the form of visual art (paintings, murals, textiles, sculpture, mixed media, film, prints), music, performance, design, or participatory practice.
Guiding Questions
How do women’s experiences shape urban life?
How can we represent the various ways of knowing that shape our understanding of space?
How do we celebrate that knowing?
How do we recognise the different roles played by different women, not as a monolith, but in their vitality amidst change and flux?
How might this speak back to the women before us?
How can we create spaces of rest, reflection, and celebration that are truly inclusive?
Eligibility
Open to all women-identifying creatives, artists, urbanists, researchers, and architects based on the African continent.
Submission Criteria
Works should be durable and consider their legacy—how they will persist beyond the project and embody the resilience, strength, and vulnerability of women’s informal urban knowledge.
Contributions may include installations, performances, visual works, or design interventions.Preference for works that are easily transportable and consider carbon footprint.
Transportation of works covered for artists based in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana.For submissions from outside Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, or Benin, where we are unable to cover shipping costs, we ask contributors to consider forms such as film, digital prints, music, or other media that can be shared without transport.
Responses should engage with the rhythms of the city through your own perspective.
Works can be new or existing. If they remain after the exhibition, artists are asked to think about how they continue to play a role in the space.
Exhibition spaces are mainly covered by open air so works must be suitable for outdoor display.
Remuneration
£400 per selected commissioned work
Two-year membership at Ɛdan Studios and Spaces (urban laboratory and co-working space in Accra, Ghana)
How to Submit
Complete the application form online with;
A brief artist statement (written or video, 150–250 words) describing how your work engages with the project’s themes and legacy
Visual or descriptive documentation of the current or proposed work
Technical/logistical requirements (size, materials, display needs)
A portfolio of previous works
About the Project
This participatory testbed is a collaboration between Black Females in Architecture and Ɛdan Ghana. It is designed as a space of rest, reflection, engagement, and community care through the activation of public space. Together, we are imagining and co-creating a city where women’s ways of knowing are made visible, valued, and sustained.
Join us in creating a space where all are truly invited.