ART EDUCATION CONFAB OPENS IN KUMASI (PAGE 11)

A TWO-week international conference on Art Education has opened at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.
The event was organised by the Department of Art Education in collaboration with the African Community of Art Educators (AfriCOAE) in the United States of America.
The participants, numbering 28, are from China, Australia, Austria, Hungary, Uganda, Nigeria, Canada, USA, Cameroon, the United Kingdom (UK) and Ghana.
The programme which has the theme “The Kumasi Symposium: Tapping Local Resources for Sustenance Education through Art” is a follow-up to a similar one that took place in Accra in 2008.
Opening the conference, Professor Williams Ellis, Pro Vice Chancellor of KNUST, said the current state of affairs in the world called for the sharing of ideas and knowledge towards a holistic education development to help ensure productivity.
He noted that there was the need for more of such programmes to be organised to broaden knowledge of all stakeholders of the various sectors to help promote the use of local resources.
He commended the College of Art and Social Sciences (CASS) for being among the best colleges at KNUST and at the same time having the largest student population.
Prof. Dr Dr Daniel Buor, Provost of CASS said the theme for the conference was befitting since tapping local resources to support art education would save the nation some foreign exchange.
He challenged the participants to ensure that by the end of the programme, they would have developed ideas, issues and findings that could help enhance the teaching and learning of Art in the various institutions.
Nana Afia Amponsa Opoku Afriyie, Head of the Department of General Art Studies, said the conference was aimed at dialoguing to sustain the teaching of art in the various institutions in the world over.
She indicated that much more needed to be done to have a holistic art education but lamented over the inadequate infrastructure and personnel to support and enhance the teaching and learning of Art at all levels.
Nana Afia said the issues to be discussed include Art education, Studio Practice, Arts Administration, Management/Marketing Practice, Natural and man-made environmental issues in artistic practices and best practices and programmes.
She indicated that the programme would entail plenary sessions and support activities such as demonstrations and workshops, exhibitions, and site-specific tours of local and national resources and end it with panel presentations.
The Dean of the Faculty of Fine Art, Mr Benjamin Offei-Nyarko, said the faculty had over the past two years been collaborating with a number of institutions the world over with the aim of projecting programmes offered and to court others to the country.