Making Batik Safe for Children

Abstract

The main purpose of this project was to make batik production readily applicable, participatory, beneficial and less injurious to children between the ages of 4 to 10 years using the child art as motifs. The qualitative research approach was used and under it, the researchers employed the experimental and descriptive research design. Purposive sampling was also used to sample the drawing and paintings collected from children between the ages of 4 to 10 years. A prepared questionnaire was applied to interview the target group to help address the following objectives. To make batik production readily applicable and less injurious to children between the ages of 4 to 10 years and to offer opportunity for children to express their creative art in batik making for self-gratification and pleasure. The study examined these two research questions: ‘How can batik production be made applicable and less injurious for children’ and ‘how can children be engaged to express their creative art in batik making’. Significantly, the project offered a psycho-emotional release of the children during the batik making process and assuredly indicated that it’s possible for children to practice batik making. The type of batik used was the Kanto (a dual technique which combines the use of screens and resist dyeing). The resist medium used was the powdered cassava starch and the konkonte (a locally prepared starch). The successful work process adopted proved that child art executed freely to express their innate creative rights can be translated into motifs and into designs and safely used by children for safe batik production via the screen printing using the Kanto print technique. The resultant product confirms that child art, developed by children is readily applicable to batik making and anticipatorily beneficial to child development when the right method is applied. It further seeks to advocate that textile design experts must consider child art as potential designs for fabric decoration and engage them in the creative art process at their early stage. Using this study as a platform, advocate further research on child art by textile designers using other forms of fabric decoration.