National Commission on Culture launches 2021 Wear Ghana festival

The National Commission on Culture (NCC), has launched the Wear Ghana festival for 2021 to promote National Identity and encourage patronage of local fabrics.

The festival will take place virtually this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic with activities such as virtual online Fashion show, Spoken word show, teaching the appropriate way of wearing men's cloth and media interviews with key stakeholders.

Madam Janet Edna Nyame, Executive Director, NCNC, launching the festival, said the Wear Ghana initiative was part of the Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture string of activities to promote Ghana, including See Ghana, Feel Ghana and Eat Ghana, instituted four years ago.

She said the Commission took the Wear Ghana aspect to promote Ghanaian clothing through the festive celebration of it by fashion shows every year.

Madam Nyame said the Commission in collaboration with Ghana Textiles Printing Company Limited (GTP), Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) and National Theater took the initiative of the Wear Ghana festival to organize a fashion show in March every year.

She said the fashion show aimed at promoting the country’s local textiles fabrics, unearth the talents of the young ones, and also create employment for the youth who were into fashion and
dressmaking.

Madam Nyame said designers for this year’s celebration were to use our local fabrics to design various outfits that can be worn both locally and at any international program outside Ghana for the international communities to appreciate what Ghana had.

She urge all Ghanaians to patronize the colourful local fabrics, adding that she would be grateful if a law was passed to ensure that Ghanaian fabrics, such as the smock, kente, GTP, Woodin, the batik tie & dye, were worn at all state and international functions just to promote the Ghanaian culture and identity.

Madam Nyame said this year’s fashion show was not going to be a one-day event but a whole month where various designers would display their designs with their models catwalking on the various social media handles of the Commission.

Prof Fredrick Owusu Nyarko, Ambassador for Culture Ghana and beyond, said they would be visiting institutions to take photographs of individuals who were wearing local prints.

He said these pictures would be put into the Commission's social media handles for people to vote and that those that emerged winners would have media exposure to encourage more people to wear made in Ghana products.

Professor Nyarko said they intended to engage the Media, especially radio and television station to propagate the wear Ghana message to enable more Ghanaians to buy more into it.