Ask a child to draw the city of their dreams and see how they translate their imagination onto a plain sheet of paper. When Mumbai-based organisation Art1st—they advocate the importance of visual art education—decided to implement something similar with students of MCD schools in Nizamuddin Basti, South East Delhi, the results were nothing short of spectacular.
“We got the students coloured paper and they created a collage. They painted with their fingers, drew, and pasted papers together... we engaged with them on how to build their dream city,” explains Sreejata Roy, head of community engagement programmes with Art1st. This workshop called ‘City of Dreams’ was conducted for students of class 4 and 5, as a part of the Delhi Art Week (DAW) 2022, an ongoing initiative that seeks to raise awareness about contemporary arts in the capital.
Talking about the initiative, Yasmeen Mishra, marketing director, Art1st shared, “DAW is fundamentally about making art accessible to more people and engaging with conversations around it. We [Art1st] got involved because as a social enterprise, we believe in the transformation that art can bring. DAW is a great opportunity to engage with children from different groups.”
Promoting meaningful learning
Remember how art classes would only take place once in a week back in school? Art, for long, has been considered as an activity that supplements conventional learning. However, education practitioners and curriculum developers have now realised the role that art-based education can play in the overall development of a child. A number of studies show that such education not only strengthens artistic skills of children but also helps them build imagination, self-confidence, and other qualities.
Since their inception in 2009, Art1st has been working at the intersection of art and pedagogy to design and implement art-integrated curriculum within schools. At DAW, apart from conducting workshops with students at the basti, the organisation also held two sessions at the Eureka Bookstore, Greater Kailash II, where the participating children—about 10 children joined them on each day—were familiarised with the works of artists such as sculptor and printmaker Somnath Hore, visual artist Ambadas Khobragade, and contemporary painter Avinash Chandra.
The two-hour-long sessions were crafted for students to learn about and attempt the techniques mastered by these artists—printmaking, doodling, and landscape painting, respectively. After creating their own compositions, children were also asked to discuss their works among themselves to encourage them to collaborate with each other.
Sharing the response of the children, Ghanishka Kedar, artist and mentor with Art1st, shared, “Students were able to make a story out of the forms created. The idea was to help them see forms in things that are random, and help them go beyond the existing idea of art and what we consider as an error in art.” With their model of education, Art1st is on an endeavour to carve a space where art becomes a medium of learning for all students, irrespective of their backgrounds.