www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org CHILD ART AS DESIGN ELEMENTS FOR FABRIC DECORATION ABRAHAM EKOW ASMAH 1 , VINCENTIA OKPATTAH 2 & MAVIS OSEI 3 1,2 Department of Integrated Rural Art and Industry, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana 3 Department of General Art Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi-Ghana ABSTRACT This study conveys to the fore the significance of child visual art works as valuable potential designed elements for the development of fashionable prints for children’s wear. With a little modification, the paper reveals the possibility of using these works from the children to promote their creativity in the realm of fabric design. As a practicable project, the practice-based research under the qualitative design methodology was used. The drawings of 411 purposive sampled participants; 2 to 12 year-old boys and girls from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Nursery and Primary School (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Campus) and D and D Kiddie Kare and Academy (Deduako) in kindergarten and basics one to six were systematically examined. Descriptive analysis used, drew on a range of children’s art works to provide fresh hypothetical insight into the possibility of using child art as a motif for developing fashionable designed fabric prints. The key findings are that children’s developed works of art are innovative and dynamic, give them a sense of joy and identity that develops into relevance when processed into children’s fashionable wear. The paper also acknowledges that creativity makes use of the traditional and the conventional methods for developing textile motifs, a promising source of creativeness that has the potential to overwhelm the field of design for children’s fashionable wears. Since Art culture is an integral part of every human being, this paper seeks to advocate that textile design experts must engage and elicit children’s perspectives and experiences through art KEYWORDS: Creativity, Fashionable Wears, Conventional Methods, Designed Prints, Child Art INTRODUCTION Childhood as a unique period of development was understood more fully in the 17th and 18th centuries, as reflected in the writings of two important European thinkers. John Locke (1690), an English philosopher, argued that the newborn infant comes into the world with no inherited predispositions, but rather with a mind as a “Tabula rasa”(Latin for “blank slate”) that is gradually filled with designs, concepts, and knowledge from experiences in their world (“John Locke”, 2008). He adds that it was just after this period of the original sin, Tabula rasa and innate goodness views of children that their spontaneous drawings were also seen as valuable to receive some consideration from adults. Children’s art finally got to be appreciated on their own merits in the early twentieth century, when major changes were made in aesthetic standards used to judge works of art (Enti, 2008). Locke concluded that the quality of early experiences, particularly how children are raised and educated, shapes the direction of a child’s life. In this light, Du Plessis and Conl ey (2007) andEnti (2008) decried the exploitation of child labour and highlighted the need for educational and social interventions to sharpen the intellectual development of the child as well as to make his emotional development paramount in education when developing educational policies in a bid also to enhance his intellectual development. International Journal of Textile and Fashion Technology (IJTFT) ISSN(P): 2250-2378; ISSN(E): 2319-4510 Vol. 5, Issue 1, Feb 2015, 33-48 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd