A great place to shop for handicrafts but you must also be prepared for a hard sell. The Accra Arts Center is not exactly a nice, big, orderly building. Rather, it is a crowded collection of vendor stalls; for first time visitors, entering the dimly lit market can be overwhelming. Vendors will do anything to lure buyers into their stalls: cajole, joke, sing, tug at sleeves… ahem, meet you at your car in the dirt parking lot and personally accompany you to their stall.
For the tourist looking for generic nick-nacks, there are many things to buy at the Accra Arts Center – brightly colored trinkets and clothing, jewelry made from melted down, out-of-circulation coins. But with patience and will, the market also reveals unique handmade items for purchase – woodcraft and contemporary pottery, tribal masks, drums of all sizes (on the spot engraving included), and textiles woven by the Ewe and Ashanti tribes.
The Accra Arts Center is not the only place to buy regional art, but where that sale takes place depends on what kind of story you want to tell about the purchase.
