FUNTIME with Adinkra Symbols
Creating Stencil Books and T-shirts with some Adinkra Symbols.
Primary Goal
The main goal of this project is to create an experimental creative work of design utilizing some of the Adinkra symbols from Ghana, West Africa. In this project, ten unique Adinkra symbols will be selected and cut out as stencils. The stencils will be bound into a book, utilizing either a Japanese binding or Secret Belgian Binding. The stencils will serve as templates for tracing the symbols for coloring. The participants can use colored pencils, crayons, poster paint, and any medium they are comfortable with to color the traced adinkra symbols. The user can then scan or take a picture of the colored adinkra symbol with a scanner or phone, print it onto a heat transfer paper, and transfer it onto a T-Shirt. Images of the printed T-Shirt or colored symbols can be loaded on the Adinkra gallery web page for appreciation and at the same time to serve as motivation to others.
Secondary Goal
This project will reintroduce the Adinkra symbols as symbols that can be used just like the kente cloth to represent an African identity. The project will target children and adults of African heritage, African Americans, diasporas, and those who want to identify with Africa. It will also aim at encouraging the creation of new symbols and the use of the Adinkra symbols in the production of fanciful designs, artworks, and wearable.
TRACE Me
Created a stencil book with some selected Adinkra symbols. This is to make it easy for the symbols to be reproduced especially by children and can be use to produce all other type of designs and artworks. The stencils were cut on a Creativity Street Pacon Plastic Art Sheets using a Cricut Maker and spiral bound into a book.
COLOR Me
Adinkra symbols are part of my Ghanaian heritage, they play a very significant role in enriching my culture. I learned most of these symbols through informal education. My goal is to impact this knowledge on my children and other children who might not be fortunate to have learned some of these cultures from their grandparents and elders as I did. In this project, I introduced my children to the symbols by coloring and transferring them to T-shirts. Mostly these symbols are rendered in black and white, but we are coloring them to add a touch of modernity. I chose the transfer method for the T-shirt printing to symbolize my transfer of knowledge of these symbols to them.
These symbols were chosen and given to two girls aged 5 and 9, and a boy aged 11 to color.
Symbols were colored by a 5-year-old girl who is about to start kindergarten. No preschool attended. No special instruction was given. She chose her own colors and style of coloring.
Symbols were colored by a 9-year-old girl who was in the fourth grade. No special instruction was given. She chose her own colors and style of coloring.
Symbols were colored by an 11-year-old boy who was in sixth grade. No special instruction was given. He chose his own colors and style of coloring.
