Red Clay Studio

Red Clay Studio is an open art studio and cultural complex near Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana, founded by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987) and opened on 5 September 2020. It extends Mahama's Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), which opened in Tamale in 2019, and is described as a studio, cultural centre and open-access community space.

The buildings are made from locally sourced baked red clay bricks, a reference to the burnt-umber earth of northern Ghana, and rely on natural ventilation and skylights rather than cooling systems. The site works as both an education campus and an exhibition space. Galleries have shown work by artists including photographer James Barnor and Jojo Abdallah, while installations include "The Parliament of Ghosts", a reconstructed parliamentary chamber using 120 second-class train seats, stacked medical stretchers, and a room of sewing machines on school desks.

Much of the collection is repurposed. Mahama spent US$1m in 2021 on six decommissioned planes, now used as classrooms and screening rooms, and late-19th-century railway carriages rescued from sidings in southern Ghana serve as libraries and learning spaces. The site also holds an archive of Ghanaian material from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Visitor accounts describe guided tours of the galleries and installations, and access to the archive room, the aircraft classrooms and screening rooms, and the carriage libraries. Entrance has been reported as free, with a guide quoted as saying the place is "for the community, it's for the world". One visitor account mentions plans for a cafe and for converting some carriages into guest accommodation; these were described as plans rather than confirmed amenities.

The studio sits outside Tamale in the Tamale Metropolitan Area, at Janna Kpeŋŋ (also rendered Janachang), a community roughly a 30-minute ride from the city. No precise coordinates or street address were verified, and no confirmed toilets, shop, parking or food service were documented in the sources read.