Samuel Donkoh & Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel (2026)

The study examines the design structure, symbolic content, and national identity constructs embedded in the Speaker of Parliament’s robes across Ghana’s major political epochs. Anchored in a qualitative historical research design. With the aid of expert purposive sampling technique, the study engaged six key stakeholders with specialised institutional and cultural knowledge through semi-structured interviews complemented by archival photographs of the parliamentary robes of present and past parliament speakers. Thematic and visual analysis constituted the methods of data analysis. The findings revealed that the design structure of Ghana’s parliamentary robes is firmly rooted in the British Westminster parliamentary tradition, reflecting the country’s colonial legislative inheritance and the desire for institutional continuity, formality, and global parliamentary legitimacy. The Eurocentric forms of parliamentary robes have not been adopted uncritically; they have been deliberately glocalised through the incorporation of Ghanaian national colours and Adinkra symbols. These indigenous elements function as visual signifiers that embed Ghanaian philosophies, values, and collective memory into the robes, thereby transforming them into hybrid dress fashion that simultaneously references colonial legacy and cultural reclamation. Consequently, the speaker’s robe emerges as a performative artefact that symbolically positions the speaker as both a neutral constitutional authority and a culturally grounded national figure. The study concludes that Ghana’s parliamentary robes serve as dynamic visual instruments that continuously negotiate and express the nation’s evolving democratic identity. It recommends the formal archiving, documentation, and preservation of these robes as significant national heritage artefacts.

Sumaila Issah (2026)

Children’s drawings are recognized as non-verbal narratives that reflect their cognitive, emotional, and social worlds, shaped significantly by their environmental contexts. In Ghana, however, research has remained largely descriptive, cataloguing what children draw without deeply examining how their surroundings function as an informal multidimensional curriculum. This qualitative study addresses this gap through the analysis of spontaneous drawings of 16 children across four schools in northern and southern Ghana, alongside the perspectives of 10 key stakeholders, all totaling 26 participants. Through thematic and visual analysis, the study found that the children’s drawings represent four categories of realities. This includes the Common Reality of their immediate environments depicted through detailed renderings of local infrastructures like boreholes, classrooms and bicycles among others. The children’s drawings are also encoded with their Normative Realities, evidenced by consistent inclusions of religious attire, while Projected and Prophetic Realities emerge through aspirational elements such as aeroplanes and fishing boats, reflecting future hopes. Also, the study found pronounced regional variations in the children’s drawing between southern and Northern Ghanaian settings, underscoring the socio-ecological specificity of artistic content. The study concludes that the environment acts as a dynamic, multidimensional informal curriculum for children artistic development. It is imperative that teachers, parents, and cultural coordinators in Ghana, particularly within the studied contexts, actively collaborate to recognise, and intentionally leverage the child’s environmental milieu as a legitimate and vital curriculum for children artistic development.