Title:
Child's play

Author:
Kojo Biney

Category:
RE-place

Description:
CHILD'S PLAY – A CATALYSE TO PLASTIC WASTE MANAGEMENT From the 80’s when growing up as a kid, recycling of waste materials to produce toy play was the order of the day. It didn’t matter if you come from rural or urban certain or whether parent can afford imported toys or not. Waste usage by kid wasn’t only the order of the day but was highly encourage in educational curriculum. Empty product cans, plastic bottles, rubbers and papers where never a waste; toy cars and other child play items where produced out of it by kids. It was amazing as kids creatively explore their talent by creating toy water tanker cars, bicycles, airplane, art & crafts and many more. The Era was a bleeding environment for kid’s innovation, art, science and technical skills. This project seek to analyzed two generational era or trend and try to bring back what used to be the solution to plastic by children, as the challenge is highlight and solution given by the artist. Today we see a lot of waste material especially plastics floating all around drainages, water bodies, universal sea and seriously competing with the soil on the environment for space. The breakdown of such innovative trend emerged due to the following factors; *Breakdown of Extended Family System - Society has breakdown extended family system which involves different subset of nuclear family (Parent and Children). It used to be a society for all, where everybody is related to the each other if not by blood lineage but of the fact that we are one people with one culture due to the extended family structure. Kids were asset for all adult; they were disciplined and nurtured by all. Children were allowed to move freely from various homes to play together, some end up sleeping and eating from other homes without any problem. Children shared ideas and came out with innovative ideas to produce toys from waste materials for child’s play. Today’s society has been curved to be ‘each one for him/her self, society for us all’. Children are trained to solely depend on themselves and that has reduced drastically children involvement with the society and environment. *Educational Reforms - The curriculum used to be packed with instructional topics and exercises that promoted innovation and creativity with the environment. Children were mostly given assignment and home work that instructed them to engage with the environment in a creative manner. Clay were used to produce a lot of stuff by children, Palm tree branches, plastics and other materials that could pose a threat to the environment or rotten were turned into fans, basket, toys and other usable items. Empty containers and plastics were even hard to get because parent used them as decorative items in living room dividers and shelves yet the few gotten by the children were creatively utilized. Best curriculums now as claimed by educational reformers and ministries have scraped off all the instructional exercises and practices. Books produce to help in that regard, are all scraped off from the system. *Computer and Games - One sad thing about Ghana and Africa as a whole is the total neglect or throwing away of what we have as people, entirely for foreign culture practices that deemed useful. Today’s children are mostly indoors and their source of entertainments are computers, TV and computer games. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the software and programs of those computer and games were of Africa culture. Today’s children act like robots (garbage in, garbage out), less friendly, less engaging with the environment and society. Computer is good in this modern era for great output, productivity, efficiency and innovations yet we shouldn’t throw away our culture of children coming together to play, share ideas, create and effectively engage the environment and society. Because Children are mostly indoor, they turned to treat their homes friendly by keeping it clean and are hostile to the outdoor or open environment, nothing triggers in today’s child when throwing plastic and rubbers anyhow into the environment after consumption. Children used to keep those stuffs so they can play with it or creatively used it with their friends when playing “Daddy and Mummy”- “Nkuro Bo” in Fante. “Sankofa”- “meaning go back for it”, is still there for us to uphold those memorable creative experiences by children to solve plastic and waste problem facing society today. The project “CHILD’S PLAY has a strong relevance and relation with universal sea pure or plastic because it dialogues and engage kids especially those in the coastal areas to used plastics and debris that the universal sea bound back to them for toys and other useable things for their child’s play activities. It also brings kids together and educates them on the need to reused, replace and re-act on plastics. It has become critical for all hands to be on deck regardless of age, gender and nationality. The universal sea must be pure from plastics. for more mind blowing art crusade on plastic pollution on the universal sea check --------#www.facebook.com/kojobineynatureart #www.universal-sea.com/user/kojo-biney?profiletab=posts