Knust Kumasi

Call for Applications: INTERNATIONAL LAND ART WORKSHOP

Date: October 5-19, 2012

Venue: Sang Arts Village, Sang near Tamale in Northern Region of Ghana

Date: February 10-24, 2012

Venue: Abetenim Arts Village near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana

International Land Art Workshop is a two-week group residency.  It is designed to bring together creative persons such as artists, architects and engineers to create works by use of materials from the environment.  The participants will live and work together in an Arts Village in a rural township for knowledge sharing and cross-fertilization of skills over the two-week period.  By land art (or earthworks, environmental art) we imply: (1) Works created with materials from the environment involving air, water, earth, stone, and wood, or (2) Site-specific installation (with natural or industrial materials) within a landscape to create an aesthetic experience.  Thus, the theme is open; but permanency of work is encouraged, ephemeral would be only if it is the most appropriate means to communicating the idea.  The realized work may become a part of the Arts Village or sited in a public space in nearby village.

Organizers will provide accommodation and food; an accepted applicant will contribute participation fee of $100 / €70 toward food.  The international participant is responsible for own travel costs and proposed project.  We suggest that participants apply for travel grants through their national art councils or other sources.  To apply, send CV, statement/sketch of your proposed work, and a sample of your existing work to info@nkafoundation.org/ nkaprojects@gmx.com.  Submissions will be reviewed until space is filled.  For details on our projects go to www.nkafoundation.org.

In Ghana: Nka Foundation, Box Up 1115, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi.

In Burkina Faso: Nka Foundation, 04 BP 399, Ouagadougou 04.

PDF Land Art Workshop

Call for Seminal Presentation Proposals: PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART

CALL FOR PANEL PROPOSALS, THEORY PAPERS / PRESENTATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS / WORKSHOPS

THE KUMASI SYMPOSIUM: Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education Through Art

Department of General Arts & Art Education, College of Arts and Social Sciences

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana

July 31-August 14, 2009

A call is made for contributions addressing one or more of the symposium strands and topics: Art Education Practice, Studio Practice, Curatorial/Museum/Community Arts Practice, Art History/Criticism, Arts Administration/Management/Marketing Practice, and Open Session. The symposium entails plenary sessions and support activities such as demonstrations/workshops, exhibitions, and site-specific tours of local national resources. Expression of interest and proposals for Plenary Sessions and Exhibitions/Practical Workshops will be reviews until January 17, 2009. We expect about 200 participants from around the world. The working language of the conference will be English. Applications for individual paper presentation and participation will be reviewed until the space is filled. All abstracts and brief biographies should be submitted electronically to africoae@gmail.com

The symposium is organized as collaboration between African Community of Arts Educators AfriCOAE and KNUST’s Department of General Arts & Art Education. As a follow-up to AfriCOAE’s Project Earth to Art: Tapping Local Natural Resources for Sustainable Art Education Development at Accra. The two-week symposium July 31-August 14, 2009 will deal with the issue of sustainability in the 21st century to enable visual arts education developments in Ghana and perhaps similar settings. Owing to the challenges of transition from the postcolonial stance and to many others, best practices and resourceful programs often fail to roll out nationwide and to be sustained. The following questions will therefore guide the dialogues: Is sustainability of art teaching and learning developments in the postcolonial African environment possible? Can the postcolonial Ghanaian environment and non-Western others today provide adapt resources for sustainable artistic practice? If so, how can the resources best be tapped for education through art in Anglophone Ghana and other Modernist African settings?

Tapping Local Natural Resources for Sustainable Art

Education Development

PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART is an experimental eco-pedagogy project for application in art education in the Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone African settings. The project addresses problems of shortages of adequately trained school art teachers, costs and reliance on imported art materials, and collaborations with stakeholders of the public and private schools in creating desirable human capital for teaching and learning in art. The idea is to bring together a cohort of art educators for a two-week workshop in Ghana in summer 2008.

The workshop will entail formal discussions and mini-lab tours of regional sites to explore for ecological materials and test their effectiveness in art making. Upon return to their place of teaching, the participants will work with their students to likewise explore, identity, collect, and design art materials from the local environment and test them by art making. In the following year, the cohort will reconvene to share the results of the art laboratory and engaged in papermaking workshop using local-ecological materials. A driving concept of the project is that art materials come from one’s own environment; we reason that in the traditional African setting, the art materials come from the local environment; tools come from the community, and conceptual basis from the human condition. The focus is Ghana, in hope that the results would disperse into other parts of Africa and elsewhere.

via PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART.