James Town comes alive with 5th Chale Wote Street Art festival
The 5th Chale Wote Street Art Festival themed “African Electronics” has kicked off at James Town in Accra, bringing Jamestown alive with art: paintings, graffiti, music, poetry, traditional Ghanaian handicraft and fashion.
Contemporary fashion and music is not left out, as a number of fashion dealers are at the festival. Hip hop movement yoyo tinz is also at the festival, with its open mic installation “The Shrine.”
As usual, the festival is drawing a massive crowd to James Town, to appreciate street art and Jamestown’s history.
This year’s festival is seeing the participation of artists from across Africa including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda, and Mantse Aryeequaye, the Director of the programme, says the benefits of the international collaboration are enormous to all parties.
The annual festival is organized by ACCRA [dot] ALT, a cultural platform for celebrating African alternative music, video and art, and its partners are The Foundation for Contemporary Art Ghana, and No Limits Charity Foundation.
Among the impressive artwork are Kwame Asante Agyare’s milk tin cars: a disappearing childhood craft, and Bright Ackwerh’s “the million man riot”, a fantasy riot by various figures leading the discourse on the African identity,
Speaking to ghanabusinessnews.com, the artist said the riot was against a myriad of predicaments associated with being black such as police brutality against blacks in the USA, poor governance in Africa and the falling standards of cultural production: music and especially, film.
The festival also features street processions, hourly historical tours, acrobatic performances, rollerblade stunts, and a photo exhibition by the Deo Gratias photo studio of pre and post-independence Accra.
“The Labs”, two days of short and feature-length films, talks and music on a range of themes such as fear, ethnic strife, urbanization and electronic waste, humanity and homosexuality hosted by pan-African culture and arts centres, Nubuke Foundation and WEB Du Bois Centre, preceded the main event on Saturday, August 22 and Sunday the 23.
By Emmanuel Odonkor