Gold Coast Hand and Eye Work: A genealogical History

seid’ou, kąrî’kạchä

Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.

E-mail: karikacza@gmail.com; Mobile: +233200213128

Accepted January 15, 2014

This paper investigates the intellectual legacy of Hand and Eye Work, the first art-based curriculum officially introduced by the Gold Coast colonial government, appearing first in the Educational Code of 1887. Adapting the genealogical method of Foucault for a historical study, I unearth the Hand and Eye programme's kinship with child-centered education schemes of Pestalozzi and his follower Froebel, and their lineage of technical and vocational education schemes in the British South Kensington “manual training” system, the German Gewerbeschule and the Scandinavian Slöjd system. I argue that the “bread and butter” vocational focus of the colonial scheme displaced the more recondite and progressive aspects of the Pestalozzi-Froebelian system. The programme became mechanistic and remained impervious to modern art until G. A. Stevens, a young graduate from the Slade School, became art master in the Government Training College and Achimota College. Echoing his mentor Roger Fry's dictum to “get rid of all that South-Kensington nonsense”, Stevens critiqued Hand and Eye training thus: “There was, and is, no provision for the training of taste, appreciation, criticism, or for the slightest perception of art history”. This was the beginning of a revolution in Gold Coast art education.

Keywords: Gold Coast, Hand and Eye Work