The Okorase Circuit of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Akuapim North Municipality of the Eastern Region has organised a culture, arts, and design festival for schools, inviting students to showcase their talents.
The biennial cultural, arts and design festival for 2023, took place at Osabene English/Arabic Basic School in Koforidua, on the theme, “The Relevance of Cultural Education to the Ghanaian Economy”.
The festival brought all the nine schools in the Okorase circuit together.
Mr Isaac Agyei, the Chairman of the organising committee of the cultural festival, said teachers should be able to advise and mentor students who display specific talents in culture and traditions, to help them choose a career path based on their talents.
He explained that culture was made up of the arts, beliefs, values, customs, and institutions of a group of people that were passed down from generation to generation to solve the problems of everyday life.
Even though career choices were purely independent and a personal idea, culture could influence the decisions, hence the importance of protecting Ghanaian culture, arts, and designs.
“Our culture and traditions are dwindling, and there is the need for the Ghana Education Service to rejuvenate them through the school children,” he said.
The were dance performances such as Kete, Agbadza, Bawa and Kukuliya by some group of students, while others in the creative arts, fashion, and design group displayed creative works in forms like clay pots, carved crocodile, gun, stool, beaded necklaces, bangles, bags, and slippers among others.
There was also the cooking art, which comprised of local dishes like Banku, Akple, Yakeyake, Tuodzafi, Fufu, Okro stew, soup, and Ampesi.
Mr Kojo Kwamina-Ansah, the Akuapim North Municipal Culture Coordinator, cited the difficulty faced by the GES to provide logistics such as traditional drums, materials for carving, fashion and design, for students to exhibit these culture and tradition celebrations.
He attributed the challenge to delays in the release of capitation grants and lack of funding sources.
He urged corporations, institutions, and charitable organisations to work with the government in facilitating the course, to help revive and instill the Ghanaian culture and traditions in the students.
“When resources are channeled into such activities, it will promote Ghana’s economy in the tourism sector because it will generate foreign exchange earnings through commodities trade, importing capital goods, and job creation,” he said.
“All of these benefits would go a long way to reduce poverty and inequality,” Nana Asare Kumi III, the Chief of Okorase.
“Hitherto, cultural education was seen as a preserve of the nuclear family,” however, with the increasing importance of cultural education on social-economic development, the world at large has now embraced it as a driver of innovation and a source of creative skills with strong linkages in the economy, he said.
He called on all and sundry to put their shoulders to the wheel to help promote Ghanaian cultural values, to encourage particularly the youth, to embrace cultural education.
