What does it mean to Build Black Globally?
The Afropole, founded by Amma Aboagye has got answers.
Amma believes that as the continent’s influence is experienced worldwide through food, music, and fashion, it is no surprise that various sects of blackness such as Africans, Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, African Americans, Afropeans share similarities.
With the objective of addressing market inefficiencies, The Afropole is a brokerage that connects African and Afrodiasporan businesses within the food, beauty, and creative industries.
Through events, communications, merchandise, and business advisory, The Afropole aims to build trust and community, develop resources and enrich value chains to Build Black Globally.
It has now become more obvious to tap into said similarities and likeness and celebrate our differences while encouraging unity through shared economics.
About the Wax Print Festival…
The Afropole’s Wax Print Festival is an event that provides an opportunity to showcase the creativity of African and Afrodiasporan businesses across the textile value chain in order to build those connections. The Wax Print Festival showcases all of the elements that The Afropole believes can Build Black Globally.
With the recent controversy with Christian Dior, it is reaching a point where Africans and Afrodiasporans are unable to claim ownership or worse still claim inspiration about their own wax print industry: there is a continued surge of big brand names claiming ownership through trademark legalities.
African or African-inspired textiles have key attributes that reflect our identity, heritage, ancestry, and dynamic cultures thereby making it hard to pass off these textiles as someone else’s. As it happens, there is an ongoing conversation about wax print that has people asking:
Is Wax Print African?
Through the Wax Print Festival, we hope to unpack prejudice and uncertainty about the topic, create informative experiences, and encourage new opinions about Wax Print and African textiles overall, in order to foster ownership and coordination in the industry.
What to expect…
Attendees of the festival should leave the event with informed answers to the aforementioned question that will spur them to take decisive actions to develop and innovate within the local textile space.
The Wax Print Festival will be a three-day, cashless event powered by over 30 partnerships meant to add range and texture to the authentic African and Afrodiasporan experience attendees will have.
This includes giveaways and other fun activities leading up to the event days. The festival will also feature the following:
- Exhibitions divided into four bits dubbed, The Past, The Present, Intersections, and The Future.
- Live demos on kente weaving, batiking and bead making
- The best food and other vendors across the region within the marketplace
- Music concerts each night
- Film
- The Quick Stitch Station which will be a fashion design kiosk where attendees can have clothing made from a menu within the duration of the time spent on the grounds
- Open Spaces described as good-natured conversations done in “un-panel style” about the African wax print industry.
All this excitement is happening within the milieu of containers that make the artistic setting of The Untamed Empire.
It will make its mark as part of the official “ Year of the Return” celebrations being promoted by Ghana Tourism Authority under the Ministry of Tourism and Culture and is an opportunity for diasporans to also engage in this meaningful work.
The Wax Print Festival will be a positive step and mark made towards Building Black Globally.
Need Tickets???
The Wax Print Festival tickets are categorized into three types: Daily tickets, All Access tickets, and VIP All Access tickets.
To purchase your early bird tickets please visit Egotickets or Wax Print Fest websites.
Get 15% off your ticket purchase to the Wax Print Fest – using our discount code WPFSLA.
The SLA team will be at the Wax Print Fest, so ensure to get your tickets now to save big. See you there.
Whether the wax print is African or African-Inspired, The Afropole’s Wax Print Festival is an event for Ghanaians, Africans and Afrodiasporans alike to claim and celebrate what African textiles mean for us culturally and economically.