Ghanaian fashion designer provides support for creatives in Guyana

Recognising the growth of the arts community within Guyana, an initiative was led on Friday to commence “The Continuum,” a networking forum which gives creatives insight to enhance their skills in their creative journey. Led by international designer Kwaku Bediako, founder and CEO of Chocolate by Kwaku Bediako.
Following President Dr. Irfaan Ali’s recent visit to Ghana, a connection was established between him and Renowned Ghanaian fashion icon Kwaku Bediako Oduro which has led to the initiative of the launch of a workshop on Friday spearheaded by the fashion artist. This impactful workshop featured local designers, Poets, makeup artists and other creatives in which traversing the dynamic & competitive world of fashion and creativity were shared alongside nuggets of advice.
As the creative industry is growing in Guyana due to the grand investment of some $2.7 billion that has been budgeted to promote Guyana’s culture and arts. Fashion icon Kwaku Bediako sought it right to deliver sound advice endowing support to the creatives as he enlightened about the importance of collaboration with different artforms and to not only lend your perspective to only one faction of art, limiting one’s self.
Creating a linkage to Hip Hop and how that artform does not entrap itself to stay in the realm of music but to vividly connect into sectors like fashion, dance and in sports such as National Basketball Association (NBA). He delivered points that creators should focus on, by plugging what they currently do into other artforms.
“If you take a look as to what hip hop has done, even in NBA and sports and fashion and how people wore the things they wore and the manner in which they sang about what they sang, it was always a matter of collaboration. Beauty goes with fashion, fashion goes with music, music goes with food.”
This advice, swiveled the pot to bring out important questions from the creatives as to how to incorporate their current art with other artforms.
As the question-and-answer segment began, a spoken word poet raised the question as to how to strategically connect poetry with fashion and to provide an example.
“Those things are the easiest to do, don’t worry too much or don’t overthink it, study first as to how to build the dots and connections between what you are doing now and the different artforms such as musicians, painters and makeup artists connect with the different creative arts first.” This he said, was the primary thing that they should think about and then everything else will fall into place.
As new questions rose students were granted with sound advice enhancing their knowledge for their future projects.
Present at the event was First Lady Arya Ali who noted that this initiative is a testament to the government’s commitment to developing the local creative industry.
“We are not oblivious to the idea that the industry needs support, that is why we continue to make investment into the industry for example, through the ministry of culture youth and sports cultural grant program and this forum that the ministry has granted today,” the first lady said. (G2)