THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The exuberance of George Frideric Handel’s ‘Water Music’ trickles in as you wrap the headphone over your ears. The 18th-century baroque musician’s lively composition of Allegro from Water Music Suite no:1 plays on. The flawless piece of music was crafted some 300 years ago, when water was in its purest of forms, when it was unpolluted and untamed. It is with this masterpiece that one is welcomed into the ‘Umdenken – von der Natur lernen’ (‘Rethinking- Learning from Nature’), a unique travelling expo which is currently on in the city.
Organised by Goethe Zentrum, the expo attempts to usher in an era of rethinking on the indiscriminate violations man subjects nature to. The exhibition which is held at the Christ Nagar Central School focuses on the elements of water, fire, earth and air. With a host of interactive tools and display boards, the ‘rethink’ exhibition tries to put forth the need to preserve nature and educate the students on sustainable living. “We have had the worst calamity of the century recently. In that backdrop we thought it necessary to bring such an exhibition to create more awareness among the school children on the need to protect nature,” says Syed Ibrahim, honorary consul of Germany for Kerala and director of Goethe Zentrum. “We have highlighted the elements in the expo. Through the exhibition, we give them information about the significance of each of these elements. They get to participate in an online quiz as well. We are reaching out to the school children and want to showcase the exhibition as a thought-provoking activity,” he adds. The expo is open to children from other schools.
Each segment of the exhibition focuses on the four important elements. Replete with quizzes and other interactive activities, the expo tries to analyse the devastation caused by the exploitation of the elements by the mankind and foster a need to preserve the elements. The CO2 calculator is an interactive activity that lets one know the amount of carbon one contributes. After answering a series of questions, the device calculates one’s CO2 footprint per year. The exhibition which started in 2015 is travelling from Germany to other countries.