COLTEK, GTP Partner to Organise Exhibition and Fashion Show

The exhilarating Exhibition and Fashion Show put together annually by the Department of Fashion Design and Textile Education (DFDTE) at the Kumasi Campus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), has this year received a major boost following the Department’s partnering with VLISCO Ghana Group, producers of Ghana Textiles Printers (GTP) to organise the event.

Subsequent to the agreement, GTP, on March 10, 2020 donated in excess of 240 yards of assorted wax prints to DFDTE for distribution to relevant students. This was to enable students to develop innovative designs for the forthcoming exhibition and fashion show.

Some of the donated GTP Wax Prints

The Annual Exhibition and Fashion Show is a major event by DFDTE aimed at helping to showcase the knowledge and skills students have acquired throughout their four-year undergraduate programme.

Principal of the College of Technology Education, Kumasi (COLTEK), Prof. Frederick Kwaku Sarfo, who took delivery of the fabrics for onward handing over to the DFDTE, described the move by GTP as a positive step towards realising the much touted need for the funding of tertiary education to be a shared responsibility in society.

In his view, the donation would not only boost the teaching and learning process in COLTEK but would go a long way to serve as a major support for the government’s agenda to promote and project quality TVET in the country as a way out of the unemployment scourge that has beset the nation.

He also re-echoed the need for the partnership to be consolidated. He averred that GTP would leverage on the beautiful and innovative designs displayed by COLTEK students and publicised by the mass media. Ultimately, he said, this would stimulate patronage of locally-made fabrics and designs.

Professor Sarfo was full of praise for the authorities at DFDTE for their initiative to seek external support for the Exhibition and Fashion Show and hoped that the students would add value to the fabrics through their designs and flaunt their honed talents and expertise gained from years of training at COLTEK during the event.

(From right-left) Principal of COLTEK, Prof. Frederick K. Sarfo; Head of DFDTE, Dr. Josephine Ntiri and the Ashanti Regional Director of GTP, Mr Kwasi Baiden displaying some of the GTP Wax Prints during the ceremony

Head of DFDTE, Dr. Josephine Ntiri, also thanked GTP profusely for their kind gesture expressing the hope that the partnership with them would not fizzle out after this year’s event. She explained that such opportunities present a major avenue to bridge the gap between academia and industry. Moreover, both institutions stood a good chance of making valuable gains from the partnership.

In presenting the fabrics, the Ashanti Regional Manager of GTP, Mr. Kwasi Baiden indicated the confidence of his outfit in the partnership with DFDTE and was hopeful that the partnership was for the mutual benefit of both institutions.

A group photograph of some of the FDTE students at the presentation ceremony

While stressing the ‘hardly comparable’ quality of their products to the others on the market, Mr. Baiden encouraged the students to engineer wonderful designs from the fabrics in a way that would project their talents to the world ultimately.

This year’s event on the theme “Projecting African Culture through Creativity” has been scheduled from April 23-24, 2020, at the Kumasi Campus.

A photograph of one of the Fashion laboratories at COLTEK