An Original Investigation into the Relationship Between Urbanisation and Traditional Art Practice in Nigerian Cities

Urbanisation profoundly transforms the conditions of traditional art practice by removing practitioners from the ecological, social, and ceremonial contexts that gave their art its original meaning, function, and audience, and original theoretical and empirical investigation of this relationship in Nigerian cities contributes to understanding both urban creative culture and traditional art system sustainability. This study conducted an original investigation into the relationship between urbanisation and traditional art practice in Nigeria, with fieldwork in Lagos, Kano, Enugu, and Port Harcourt representing South West, North West, South East, and South South urban environments. A multi-site ethnographic and interview methodology was employed, with fieldwork periods of four to six weeks per city. A total of 72 traditional artists and craftspeople who had migrated to cities or been born into urban traditional art practice communities were interviewed through structured biographical interviews, supplemented by observation of urban traditional art production contexts. Cross-case comparative analysis generated theoretical constructs through constant comparison. The original Urbanisation-Traditional Art Transformation Theory proposes three transformation pathways: commodification pathway (traditional art practice transformed primarily toward market production for urban commercial and tourist demand, with social function reduction), revival pathway (traditional art practice reinvented in urban contexts as heritage identity affirmation for educated urban communities without original ceremonial context), and fusion pathway (traditional art practice hybridised with contemporary urban cultural forms to create new hybrid traditions with both traditional and contemporary identity). Expert review confirmed the theory's original contribution to both urban cultural studies and traditional arts scholarship.