The Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing A.U.C.C One Year on

March was not only the birth month of the legendary author Ama Ata Aidoo but also the anniversary of the creative writing centre named in her honor at the African University College of Communications in Adabraka, Accra. This is significant because not many creators of enduring works of art in our part of the world have benefitted from such recognition while still alive and well.

It is also significant because during the anniversary month of March alone, the Aidoo Centre pulled a hat trick - of quality, engaging events - that is unprecedented in the history of not-for-profit arts centres in this country.

Under the auspices of the Kojo Yankah School of Communication at AUCC, this hitherto unknown Centre has in the past three months established itself as an oasis where the thirst of minds is quenched by the new makers of civilization in Ghana. In the months of February and March alone, four major events held at the Auditorium of the African University College of Communication attracted to AUCC's Discovery House some ten luminaries (including filmmaker Socrate Safo, musicians Gyedu Blay Ambolley and Ramzy, music producers Panji Anoff, Zapp Mallet and Rab Bakari, and authors Nana Nyarko Boateng and Robbie Ajjuah Fantini [aka Roberta Turkson]) to interact with over a thousand inquiring minds from AUCC campus and from the city at large.

But this is just the visible, obvious part: a one-month call for short story submissions for a forthcoming anthology to be called 'Adabraka: stories from the centre of the world" that ended March 31, yielded much, much more entries than anticipated, some of extremely high quality literature. Furthermore, the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre's signature #OneBookOneCommunity reading outreach project has enabled it to organize and inaugurate four Ama Ata Aidoo Book Clubs in the Adabraka area alone; it has also made it possible to embrace two ardent reading societies, namely Success B.C. in Nima and its junior counterpart at Al-Banaat Junior High School in Maamobi, also in Accra. All these in a space of the first quarter of this year!

"It hasn't been easy, but it all boils down to the fact that the Aidoo Centre is ran with a specific, unambiguous vision in mind," explains Nana S. Achampong, who was made the Centre's director January 2018. "The Centre's aim is to increase in Ghana critical reading, creative writing, and literacy generally. To achieve that, we have to make it a major repository of literature with a focus on digitally archiving all known works by authors of African descent to be made accessible to Ghanaians. Everything we do is driven by that", he added.

On a grander note, the Ama Ata Aidoo Center for Creative Writing is a unit dedicated to furthering AUCC's role in the development of a national literature through programs, projects and activities that will both nurture literary writers and literary scholars in Ghana, and encourage their interaction with other writers and artists in West Africa and around the world.

"At home and abroad, the Aidoo Center of course will also engage in numerous efforts to broaden perspectives, promote mutual understanding, and foster international literary exchange. But the core element is to put books, readers and writers together in various settings in such a way as to make it into a sort of habit. Thus will our problem of illiteracy begin to be solved", assured Nana S. Achampong, himself the author of 18 books and a senior lecturer at AUCC.

So far this year, the Centre has held a #Speakers'Forum on "Of freedom and literature", a Colloquium on "Why some great works don't work sometimes", two separate readings for students from five schools by authors Nana Nyarko and Roberta Turkson, and is getting ready to publish 'Adabraka', an anthology of short stories steeped in the Greater Accra area out in May.

On Friday April 20, author N. Maria Kwami will be reading and discussing her refreshing new feminist book "Secrets of the Bending Grove" to AUCC students and members of Accra book clubs as a part of the Centre's #NotableNewWritersSeries.

Further down the line the Centre will be hosting writing workshops, symposia, summits, and the like, but what keeps its director particularly animated are two items on its calendar.

"Prof. Aidoo herself will be delivering her speech in May. Venue to be determined. That should be something to look forward to. There'll be scholars, writers, media, everybody. And then there is the Ama Ata Aidoo prize: every year from this year, its shortlist will be revealed in August and the prize awarded in December for the best work of fiction by a Ghanaian author published in the preceding year. That sure must excite everyone in the world", gushes Achampong.

Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the most decorated feminist writers of recent times. Her numerous works include 'Someone Talking to Sometime', 'Anowa', 'Our Sister Killjoy' and 'Changes'. Aidoo began to write seriously while an honours student at the University of Ghana. She won early recognition with the groundbreaking play, 'The Dilemma of a Ghost' (1965), in which a Ghanaian student returning home brings his African American wife into the traditional culture and the extended family that he now finds restrictive. In 1982-83 she served as Ghana's minister of education.

Asked what the challenges have been so far, Aidoo Centre director Achampong smiles and says "the usual. Support. We would like to partner with organizations in any way they deem suitable in one or a combination of the following ways: providing content for the Creative Writing space whether (hard or/and soft, sponsoring any of the Centre's programs that are scheduled year-long, or assisting in equipping the Centre with the necessary tools to bring its standard up to par".