Vijay Mandir – Day 2

Next day was a fresh start. I was worried, how would the girls respond after their experience in the last workshop. The artists this time were more prepared. They were interacting with girls. In fact, at some point they were interacting with only the girls 🙂 We started with talking about what they did in the last session. They spoke about their instruments and art form again.

This time we had another member in our team. Parul didi, the storyteller! So the artists not only had to do what they had planned, but also had to learn how to collaborate with another practitioner. What is it that she was supposed to do and how can one complement the other.

The objective of today’s workshop was to get the kids to visually represent what they hear. The artists had prepared a local tale about an ant and an elephant for these kids. With Parul, they had decided to tell the kids the symbolism in the characters of the story and the various examples around us that had the same moral. Parul spoke to the kids and helped them visualize the characters in their heads, before the song was performed. Then came in the artists.

After the song got over, we had to get the kids to start drawing. We discussed with them, what are the scenes that need to be drawn in order to retell this story. This is when I had to intervene. making teams and managing students. We made teams who had to make different characters from the story. Each team had one artist with them. This is where the artists freaked out. They had never drawn, except for Zakir, who goes to school. Now the challenge was that each team makes sure the the artist learns how to draw and does not escape. I think this is something that really opened up the artists. They were scared, laughing , curious , embarrassed, all at the same time.

While the kids were drawing, most of them took out their books to copy the picture. For sometime, it kept bothering me, but after a point, I realized that it was just for reference. There are so many other things that went into making these characters. For instance, they said:

mam jab tak hanthni ki maang nahin bharenge vo hathni kaise hui?

They wanted their female elephant to wear sin door and and a flower. After we were done drawing all the characters. We decided to make all possible scenes from the song. The artists sang and with each stanza the scene that we created changed. I think it was this joy of retelling the story that stayed with the students.

The workshop ended, and was most fulfilling. We all knew that each kid enjoyed. The artists, were happy that they could interact with the girls and were ecstatic that they could also draw and paint. They said that what we say about out workshops is true, we come to make the kids learn and more than that, learn from them.

Vijay Mandir – Day 1

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Day one at Vijay Mandir was somewhat a chaos. It was much expected though. The space was small and the number of children after a point was not under our control. Though we had requested that we just want to work with the older ones from that lot and specified a number students we wanted to work with, in a space like that, it was difficult for the people there as well to keep the younger ones from not participating. The kids enjoyed for sure but, we are unsure if we achieved all the defined objectives of the first workshop.

This workshop was also an attempt to see how much the artists can handle in terms of giving attention to all students. Their capability to take decisions and change plans according to the situation. I realized there is a lot that they need to still learn and practice. Also I need to do some ice breaking exercises with them so that they know how to open up to the students.

One thing which was shocking and not anticipated was that the artists completely ignored the girls in that space. This was their first experience of interacting with girls in a workshop. Though we had spoken about it earlier since I know the kind of families they come from, hardly any women get out of the house and interact with men. I did not expect it to be so rigid and in their face. After the workshop ended I spoke to them and they said that we already know that village girls can’t learn. They shy away. I spoke to them and made them realize that it was them who were shying away and not the girls.
I also realized that the artists had to work very hard to change this notion of why they were there. There were these older boys who kept telling them to just sing for them. And the artists were struggling to tell them that they are there to teach something and not just entertain them.

Another thing that we still need to work on, is a team spirit between the artists. We had worked on it after our APS workshop, but here again, either, everyone leaves it on one person or everyone choses to do their own thing. We need to work on the concentration levels and the focus while they are conducting a workshop.

Besides all this, the workshop was fun. the kids enjoyed, they made music, sang along and got to learn something about the art form.

Preparing for Vijay Mandir – Sapna

Our next bunch of kids are from an evening school which is run by a local NGO called Sapna. This school is also special since it is housed in one of the oldest palaces in Alwar. Children who come here are from near by villages who are either from the Meo community or if not from Meo community they speak Mewati language.

The audience
This is certainly a different kind of audience from APS which has both its pluses and minuses. The artists are somewhat more confident because the children will understand their language better. On the hand this is a group who already have a perception of this art form and the community who practices this art form. As I have mentioned earlier, this is a jogi community who used to go from house to house singing and playing their instrument to ask for food. They are meant to be the ‘entertainers’ with no intention of teaching. So it was a challenge for us to get the children to view this workshop differently.

We started with discussing about these children first, moving onto why do we want to go this particular school. According to the artists, they wanted to ‘inspire’ the students to play instruments. To be able to appreciate this art form. One of the things that I wasn’t expecting was that they were also looking for potential collaborators, which I think is completely justified and another way of looking at this model. They said, the kids might talk about where they have heard it in their villages and connect up to people who might be playing similar instruments.

Another things which is different from the last time is that I haven’t done any workshops with the students before the performances. Their minds are raw and we are directly interacting with them in their performance cum workshops.

My objectives

• To assess the need for pre-performance workshops for the students.
• To be able to curate a collaboration between the artists and a local storyteller (Parul Gupta) as facilitators of the workshop.
• To be able to test how much can the artists handle/facilitate without my intervention. This is a good space to test it since the students understand their language better than mine.
• To try out a new kind of response from students who are engaging with the art from. To be able to see if these songs can be visually represented.

Preparation

A)Storytelling
We met Parul Gupta, who does workshops with young children on spoken english through storytelling in Alwar. Even for her, this was a new space and we chose to sit and brainstorm together as to how to conduct this workshop at Sapna. She shared some basic things we need to keep in mind while telling a story to children. We discussed about simplicity of the story, language, letting the kids to participate in the workshop etc.

We did a few exercises where we tried to visualize the story that the artists were trying to tell through their songs. For example there was a song from Lanka chadhayi (Ramayan) about the conversation between Seeta and Hanuman. The interesting part this that their songs are a mixture of gaayan(singing) and vaachan (talking) so the story, if not fully covered in the song is told while they are talking about the song. I started drawing while they were singing.

After they finished their song, I asked them about what are the things that they think need to be illustrated in their song. Who are the important characters, what are the other things that they wished to add to the image. They mentioned , a scene where I show Rama and Lakshman, since Seeta is talking about them. They also thought that I should have a Raavan somewhere in the image, since its his palace we are talking about. We need to show, how bad the situation is and why is Seeta so terrified.

Similarly, we looked at some images from different local magazines. We picked up another story of a lion and a mouse and identified, important characters.

We finally zeroed down on a song which is a conversation between husband elephant and wife elephant about an ant that taught them a lesson. We discussed this story in detail. Spoke about the metaphors that will be used in the story, what is it that they would want Parul to help with and what will be the final outcome of the entire process.

B) We revisited Jugalbandi. We decided that the idea this time is not to prepare the students in a jugalbandi, but inculcate the idea of rhythm  and of creating music with found objects.

C) We decided what we want to tell the children about the art from and about the artists. We revisited what we did in APS and what worked for the students and why. They realized that when they morph what they want to tell about their art form into their biographical stories, it works better for the kids.

D) In the end, we decided, how much time to give for what activity and discussed the objectives of each activity for day one.

Kaam , Samay aur Maksad

Review session at APS

Since we have had two workshops at Alwar Public School, I though it is important I do a review session there to see what have the kids retained. I divided them into pairs and gave them a sheet each to write whatever they knew about the artists and the art form. With this I gave them small cards to write down the questions they come up with that they want to ask the artists. Things that they would like to know from the artists.

While they started writing, I realized what are the things they still want to know. One thing I noticed was that they all connected to the artists’ personal stories about how they learned their instrument and their interests than the ‘historical information’ sort of things. Also the number of questions asked to a particular person was based on how much the person interacted with the students.  Rajesh bhai who hardly spoke to the students directly, had almost no questions from the students as opposed to Mausam bhai, bagged so many questions about all kinds of things, his personal experiences to technicalities of his instrument.

When I made my initial mind maps for these workshops in schools two major components were history and production of music and I realized at least this set of kids were way more interested in the production of this music including the stories and content than the history say where did this come from? This is something we need to work towards. What is it that the kids should know and how are we telling them those things. Also when we say that we want these students to engage with the art from how important it is for them to engage with the history of it as opposed to the production and experience of it. Yes, we don’t need to see both of them separately but this is a question I would want to ask through this process.

Also in response to what these students had done with the artists in last two workshops, they made a few instruments and experimented with different materials to make music. Some of the students have already started giving different forms to these materials and others are stiff exploring them in their original forms.

Here Nishad is talking about how he is making music with a strip of sunmicca he found in school.

Ayush made a few instruments with some trash that he found at home. Here he is telling us why he chose these things.

Rohan explains the making and technique of his instrument.

Visual Representation of their Songs

In our next workshop, we want to see if the students can visually represent what the artists are saying. Its basically listening to a story and visually representing it with your own imagination. There are a lots of short animal stories in the form of songs. Then there are stories talking about local heroes. I want to try and get the students to make their own versions of these local heroes by the end of the workshop. I introduced this idea to my artists today. We began with them telling me about a king. While they were talking I started drawing with them. We discussed how different people can make different kinds of king even if you give them the same description.

To introduce the idea of a story I asked Zakhir, the youngest one to tell me a story and I started drawing the characters from his story.

Then I asked him to go slow and again repeat the story and I started making some sort of a comic strip with his story. As soon as he saw me drawing, he started giving me details like its not he right had side. The bowls are wooden.With practice, the artists would know how much time they need to give to students to visualize. There are things that they might have to explain in a simpler language. What are the kinds of songs they could choose to perform so as to get the kids to make visual representations.

I am trying to arrange for this storyteller in Alwar to do a workshop with the artists so that they can understand the nuances of telling a story to such a young audience and also to connect to such local practitioners who might be able to collaborate with them or help them at different points.

Mausam Bhai – in the mirror

After one of the discussions about how at some point these artists have to start going to schools and proposing to do these workshops themselves, Mausam Bhai tried to articulate what he thinks of these workshops. This is one of the very initial videos. What I find valuable in his conversation is that unknowingly his intention behind becoming a part of this project is being articulated in some ways.

Meeting the Collector, Alwar

I met the Collector of Alwar, Mr. Ashutosh AT Pednekar. One of the goals I had set for myself was to be able to communicate what I am doing to a few local bodies in town and get their responses. The idea was to see how there can be collaborations with what is already happening , so as to imagine a sustainable model.

I had to of course re-articulate the project and make a more comprehensible report. I think this is something which is helping me the most. Since I have to explain my project to people from all walks of life , the collector , the artists , the children , the teachers, the principals, the videographer, I think this has certainly helped me to understand my project better.
The purpose of the meeting was one, to get his response and find ways to collaborate at what is already happening at Alwar level and second to explore opportunities where this pilot project can be funded so as to set the grounds for a longer program.

The meeting was successful. The collector being a thinker himself seems interested in the project. He has asked me to present this project at District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) which is a Central Government initiative in Rajasthan.

http://dietalwar.org/

He also has taken deep interest in the event that we are planning at the end of this project where the artists and the students come together and present whatever they have done. I am hoping that this project can become a model and built upon in future with this network of local bodies that is getting created here in Alwar.

I kept feeling that I am taking this step a little late in the project. I am already one and a half months into this and now is when I am involving other stakeholders.But after this meeting I realized how important it was to show what I had already done. I am glad that I had some work to show for him to understand the vision and be able to imagine the outcome of the project.

Preparing for workshop – 2

When we started preparing for the next workshop, the artists had another task at hand. Besides preparing what they will perform at the workshop and what they will get the kids to do, this time they also had to plan the workshop. What are the different things they will do and who much time each activity would take.

 

This is a scan from one of their notebooks where they have discussed and noted down each thing that they have to do.

Besides this they had a workshop with their guru Fahrukh Khan on how to prepare children for a jugalbandi.

The next task was to choose a song that they wanted to perform in the school. We started looking for stories. Songs that are short stories. One of them said,

kahani aisi ho jisme hum undo bhi shamil kar payen. Jisme unke bolne ki jigeh ho.

They finally decided to sing this song which is about how one person spent the 100 rupees he borrowed. There were a number of reasons why they picked this song. One, that the song was in a simpler language. Then they thought, it is easy to involve the students in it. They made one of the students the son, another one the villager another one the relative. They also thought, since its about simple calculation, they can get the kids to calculate with them.

Besides this they tried to incorporate each students name in the songs they sang. They said thats the technique they follow in villages where they go for propaganda. They incorporate such names in their song who they are sure to find in the villages.

hum aise hi naam chunte hain jo uss gaaon main hote hi hai.

Jugalbandi Workshop with Fahrukh Bhai

Fahrukh Bhai has been a guru to most of the artist I am working with. He is the one who has taught all these artists how to do ‘jugalbandi’. After the first session with the students we decided that the students can actually do a jugalbandi with the artists. so the task now was to train the students in the given time. Also, this time the instruments would be new. They would range from bottles, sticks, pipes to almost anything that can make sound.
Like he puts it in very simple words

ek instrument haath main aane se hi instrument banta hai.

To add to this Yusuf Bhai says,

aap jo bhi apne haanth se bajao vo hi folk instrument hai

While talking about sound and how everything can become an instrument he mentioned about an instrument called the raavan hatta which he said is made out of a coconut shell. Immediately we decided that we would make “chhanya chitra” (picture cards) of various mewati musical instruments. These instruments are made of everyday things and showing them to students might inspire them to appreciate the objects they are using to make music with the artists.

Fahrukh Bhai gave some insights into how one prepares for a jugalbandi. You begin with teaching them about rhythm (laya gyaan)with numbers. You count with them at different speeds and from there go onto keherva (taal). Then you add on different patterns(tirkit) and then you choreograph it depending on what sound you want to add when. He also tried a small jaugalbandi with the artists while the workshop was on.

Post performance reflection – artists

Today we revisited ‘gyaan ka matka’. the idea was to get them back to the content of the art form – ‘what kinds of songs’ was the topic for the game. was a good space for debate again. debate on what kind of song comes under what category. the difference between lok geet and mewati geet. i am hoping this is the beginning of some sort of archiving and categorizing of their content.
we also spoke about what according to them is important while designing a workshop
“agar agle hafte main nahin hui to aapko kya kya karna padega  khud?”
they came up with a list of things that they think they need to consider while preparing for a workshop

• humaari kahani (their story)
• apni kala ke bare main (what they want to share about the art form)
• bachchon ki ruchi (students’ interest)
• unhe kya kya pasand ayega (to gauge what they like in the performance)
• parmishann (permission from the authorities. e.g. principal of a school)
• vo log jo judna chahen (to find other people who might be interested to work with the artists)
• kya kya karna hai bachchon ke saath (acitvities)

I was very impressed when they came up with this list. Not that each one thought of each of these things but as a team they pretty well noticed and made a note of quite a few things in our first workshop with the kids.

When I asked them what did you remember from the workshop that you think were the most important things we touched upon a few basic but very important aspects.

About the art form – we discussed about what did they intentionally and unintentionally told the students about their art form. We also discussed what all they think is important for the kids to know and how it can be said in many ways so that it doesn’t sound like a lecture.

Listen – we discussed how important it is to listen to yourself and to the students while performing. We discussed how sometimes you need to ‘listen through your eyes’ to be able to gauge the interest level and participation of the students in the workshop.

Identifying the correct songs – the artists performed two songs in front of the students and realized that one was clearly more attention seeking than the other. We discussed the reasons for that and came up with three conclusions:

To chose a song that we think the children would connect to. Something that evokes a feeling. Something that makes them think. We also discussed the form of these songs – vyang (sarcasm) , chetawani (warning) etc.

To understand what kind of language do the children understand. To see if they need explanation to the lyrics of the songs.

To design the performance in such a way so that there is space for the students to respond and add to the performance. To leave spaces where the kids can engage with the art form.