KBF’s Art by Children Workshops Creating an Ecosystem of Creativity

KOCHI:
Drawing inspiration from 1960s artist-driven public space rejuvenation projects in the UK, an art workshop had about 37 students plan, design and build a “semi-permanent” playground at Kuzhuppully beach in Edavanakkad over the past weekend.
The space, built by recycling everyday materials, has a maze, a stepping block course and even a canopy built from fishing nets and discarded fabrics. Though the adventure space itself is expected to delight young beach-goers for only about a month or so, the experience of building it is one that will stick with the students of the Bhoomi Education Centre.
The two-day workshop, titled ‘Design Days’, was part of an ongoing series of art engagement and education efforts run by Art by Children (ABC) – a unique outreach programme of the Kochi Biennale Foundation – that aims to build an ‘ecosystem of creativity’ in the state. It does this through innovative workshops geared toward children, parents and teachers and working with schools across Kerala besides partnering with like-minded institutions and individuals.
Like Polly Brannan, Education Curator for the Liverpool Biennial, for whom the workshop was a chance to implement “learning through play”. “Children learn and create ownership of their projects with their decision-making. The workshop was built to encourage collective thinking and self-organising. For two days, the young people of different ages and abilities learned that art can be made from anything,” Brannan said.
“They even named themselves the ‘Vyoma Ganga’ collective to represent how every star and constellation is connected in the Milky Way. Just like how there would be no galaxy without these links between individual parts, the children realised that it was their collective effort that created this space,” she added.
Noting that the first such project was in Eastern Europe, where children had to help rebuild the streets following the First World War, Brannan said the idea of young people taking ownership of spaces was a deeply influential notion.
She has adopted the same methodology to develop a template for a series of similar workshops to be held for schools making field trips to Aspinwall House over Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016. Students of The Delta Study school in Fort Kochi participated in a session on Wednesday that focused on 10 artworks exhibited at the Biennale and visualised the architectural pavilion at the venue as a “hanging garden” of sorts. Other schools are expected to attend and “use Aspinwall as their canvas and curriculum” over th
e next week.
While ‘Art Canopy’ – the ABC creative space in the shade of the mango trees at Aspinwall House – is perhaps the programme’s most visited and visible marker, there are other remnants of its interventions conducted across the state. At Global Public School in the city, for instance, where an illuminated 5ft x 6 ft cell installation is on public display.
In keeping with the initiative’s artist-driven format, writer and poet Anuradha Nalapat had conducted last week ‘The Cell And I’ – a workshop that used art, science and cloth panels to take children into the unique landscape of the cell. The resulting ‘womb’ structure is meant to represent the inter-connectedness of the organ system and, by analogy, the community.
It is this community ABC intends to energise, said Manu Jose, who heads the programme. “The public spaces that were once available across the state for children to gather, play and realise their innate creative potential have given way to the digital devices and urban development brought on by modernity. The workshops are an effort to recapture these spaces and give children and parents viable outlets outside of the school and home,” Jose said.