Art4God: BFI Launches Gospel Comics & Cartoon Animation Project December …trains Young African Creatives

Art4God:

BFI Launches Gospel Comics & Cartoon Animation Project December …trains Young African Creatives

 

“If you want to change a nation, change its youths” – Oje Ohiwerei

Francis Umendu Odupute, BFI team leader, engages with youngsters at the Art4God workshops during Vacation Bible School (VBS) in August, 2016, in Benin City, Nigeria.

“Catch them Young”; that’s the goal. For almost two decades of resilient nation-wide YouthReach soul-winning cum moral capital development program, this audacious art and multimedia youth engagement initiative of the Beautiful Feet International (BFI) ministry has continued to record slow but steady growth with abiding fruits. Now, as new frontiers begin to open up to the small ministry, the BFI YouthReach program is expanding to other parts of Africa and world through novel strategic youth engagement creative education outreaches,  capacity building trainings and more.

With the novel “Arts4God” project facilitated by the Beautiful Feet Kreative Brainz Klub (BFKBK), BFI is engaging African Christian  children and youths through its strategic art therapy and training workshops  to discover and deploy their  diverse gifts/talents and interests in pictorial storytelling, visual journalism, creative writing, features writing, drawing/illustrations, painting, sculpting, cartooning, multimedia cum digital communication art, etc. for the purpose of communicating God’s love and counsel to their peers and others.

One of such recent successful  strategic training workshops cum art therapies, was held in August 2016 in Benin City, Edo State of Nigeria, at the 2016 Vacation Bible School (VBS) by the lead organization of the CAIB project - Beautiful Feet International (BFI) - for Christian children aged between 3 and 13 years; thanks to the cooperation and support of the VBS organisers- the Heritage Children’s Ministry, it was a worthwhile exercise that brought out the hidden talents and creative prowess of the children as they freely expressed their ’s thoughts graphically through visual art. After the three day art4God training workshop for VBS kids that lasted from August 11 to 14, 2016, no fewer than 12 children emerged as very promising young cartoonists/comic artists in the making.

The novel initiative will be replicated soon by the BFKBK in other parts of Africa as a traveling art therapy campaign/multimedia outreach with the cooperation of in-country partners including church organizations, youth groups and educational institutions.

As the annual 3-week VBS by heritage Children Ministry approaches in August, 2017, the BFI art and media team (BFKBK)plans a follow-up training workshop in cartooning, comic books creation and creative writing, etc. (during or just after the VBS) for the 12 selected kid cartoonists/comic creators/visual storytellers from the 2016 VBS workshop/art therapy. Other talented youths endorsed for the trainings by the organizers will also benefit from the strategic cartoon workshop in August, 2017.

The workshop which features mainly skills sharing on how to create cartoons, comics and how to  shall be intensive and shall last for at least 3 days. All participants would be expected to put into practice all they were taught at home and submit their works to the organizers for assessment and critiquing.

Participation costs for the training, including art materials/supplies as well as honoraria for consultants/resource persons shall be borne by BFI and its partners. At the end of the exercise, most of the works produced by the children will be selected and given to professional artists, cartoonists and comic artists in the “CAIB Working Group” as ‘story seeds’ to develop better cartoons, comic stories, info-graphics, as well as for short animation films.

Successful and passionate participants cum young artists-4-God from the training workshop shall get endorsement to join the “CAIB Working Group” when BFI launches its Africa Gospel Comics & TV Cartoon Animation project in December, 2017. They will also:

1.       Receive Certificates from BFI;

2.       Have their works published online on the Cartoon Africa International Biennial  (CAIB) website, and the works will automatically qualify for exhibition/sales during the next edition of CAIB festival in Nigeria;

3.       Have their works featured in BFI’s future editions of  LIFEGATE COMICS and also featured in the 2018 edition of BREAKOUT magazines ( published by Heritage Outreach Ministry);

4.       Get enlisted into BFI data base for future opportunities, mentoring, information/skills sharing, gospel communication networking, etc.;

5.       Free continuous mentoring and assistance from Christian art and media experts within the BFI network, to enable them hone their skills in efficacious communication of the gospel of Jesus Christ personally through information graphics, etc.;

6.       A chance to be published in national, regional and international print, online and broadcast media platforms, the social media groups/virtual communities worldwide by BFI media partners;

7.       Receive some financial rewards for every of their works published/aired by BFI, albeit under a mutually benefiting arrangement with BFKBK (which would include co-marketing and co-distributing the printed comics, videos, graphic magazines, etc.);