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.);
