Blog, 27 October 2026

Accra, Artitude 2026

Artitude 2026 took us to Ghana. From 5 to 10 October we were at Achimota School in Accra for an urban art workshop and a mural dedicated to Kofi Antubam. Our residency was made possible by a Mobility Grant for artists and culture professionals from the Africa-Europe Partnerships for Culture programme, Sub-Saharan Africa component Connect & Create, funded by the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut in partnership with Expertise France and Institut français.

Some journeys begin long before departure. Ours began months ago, among applications, vaccines, visas and suitcases full of colours, and it came to completion on a wall in Accra, surrounded by dozens of students painting with us.

We were invited to take part in Artitude 2026: Going Beyond the Classroom, the international programme promoted by Ramdom APS, based at KORA, Centro del Contemporaneo in Castrignano de’ Greci, and by the Ghanaian organisation Artlife Matters. For six days Accra brought together artists, educators, students and culture professionals from Ghana, Italy and Rwanda around one precise question: how to take art education beyond the classroom. 167/B Street was part of the project’s partner network, and our residency was made possible by the Goethe-Institut through the Africa-Europe Partnerships for Culture mobility programme.

The Artitude 2026 workshop: stencil as a common language

At the heart of our work was the workshop with the students of Achimota School, one of the most prestigious schools in Ghana, together with young people from Wesley Grammar, St. John’s Grammar and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Anna led the workshop on contemporary urban art techniques, while Chekos’art guided the participants through stencil, the technique at the centre of his research for years: from drawing and cutting the stencils to painting on the wall. The students took part in every stage of production, and the mural became a truly collective work.

Anna then facilitated the whole creative process, nurturing the dialogue between artists, students and teachers. A collective mural is not born from technique alone: it is born from listening, communication and an atmosphere in which everyone feels free to contribute.

The work: a tribute to Kofi Antubam

The chosen theme was cultural heritage. We wanted to pay tribute to Kofi Antubam, one of the pioneers of modern Ghanaian art and a teacher at Achimota School itself, a central figure in shaping Ghana’s cultural identity through symbols and forms rooted in Akan tradition.

The mural is on the building of the school’s Art Department: his face on the façade, some of his works on the side wall. The monumental portrait emerges from an optical weave of black and white lines that run across the architecture and turn the façade into a pulsating visual field. Earth tones converse with the graphic dynamism of the lines, evoking the meeting between African tradition and contemporary language. In this urban reinterpretation, Antubam’s face goes beyond the celebratory portrait and becomes a visual fabric that joins memory, culture and public space.

Bringing his figure back onto the walls where a new generation of artists is being trained today meant, for us, building a bridge between memory and the future.

The mural was presented on Saturday 10 October, on the closing day of Artitude 2026 dedicated to the Conference and Expo, the same day the Artitude Creative Library, the project’s new travelling art media library, was inaugurated in the presence of Ambassador Laura Ranalli.

A workshop for life

Beyond the artwork, what we bring home from Artitude 2026 is above all a human experience. Working side by side with the students and teachers of Achimota School was a true workshop for life, in which art became a tool for dialogue, learning and mutual growth. We saw once again how creative processes can build authentic relationships and new connections between people, places and communities.

Achimota is a beautiful, welcoming and deeply vibrant community, and we have much to learn from it. We came to teach something, and we left having received far more.

Thank you

For Artitude 2026 our heartfelt thanks go to Artlife Matters, Ramdom APS, the Goethe-Institut, Achimota School, all the students and teachers who shared these days with us, and to Amelia, who lived this journey together with us.