In Ghana, as in many areas of the world, the meanings attached to indigenous art forms are based on larger philosophical foundations. Those meanings are at the crux of the ongoing struggle in the minds of many Ghanaians over the appropriateness of Ghana's traditional arts in their contemporary education system. The indigenous arts are caught in the crossfire between the need to protect and project the country's unique cultural heritage and the adoption of a perceived modernity. This article reports an investigation of the presence and absence of indigenous arts in Ghana's current art educational policies and practices in light of the disparate yet related forces of change that continue to affect them: the British/missionary model of education inherited from the colonial era, Western science, urbanization, cultural commodification, and Christianity. The multiple perspectives and contradictory attitudes revealed in this study contribute to ambivalent educational policies and practices which are re-locating indigenous arts from spheres of “traditional” practice to “modern” spheres of entertainment and commodity.
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