17th November 2021
Wednesday
Nature Studies Through Art
Amala Aaina – CO-Founder and School Art Director of Rainbow Fish Studio
Amala is part of the founding team at RainbowFish Studio, and has been teaching Visual Art & Design in primary & middle schools across the country for over seven years. She conducts training programs & workshops for art educators in her role as School Art Program Director at RainbowFish. Amala is a graduate of Visual Communication and advocates for sustainable living. She believes that art integrated learning will enhance any education system, while empowering students to create, question and empathize’.
Pankaj Patil, Head of the Visual Arts Department
Pankaj Patil has been the Head of the Visual Arts Department for 7 years at The Somaiya School, Mumbai. Pankaj is an artist, an innovator, an animator, a graphic designer and a photographer with a keen sense of aesthetics and an eye for detail. He has several years of experience in animation and visual arts. Has worked in a corporate environment for eight years. Pankaj has made 2D mythological movies, created e-learning softwares, and has worked in the gaming industry. Has also been the Head of Design for creating and designing educational software.
18th November 2021
Thursday
Artists and Museums in the Classroom
Somya Sahni , School Art Program Officer
Somya studied at one of the most reputed Art Colleges in the country: College of Art, Delhi University, from where she pursued Graduation in Fine Art, specialising in Painting followed by Masters in the same in the year 2014.In her learning, she was able to break the shackles of Academic Realism and progress on the path of an exciting yet easy-to-grasp style and language of semi-abstract representation of what’s in her mind with subtle contrast, giving birth to an entirely original creation on canvas. The subtlety in her pictorial space with threads on canvas comes across as the final product of the vision she started with. The University of Delhi awarded her the M. F. Husain award for the knowledge & amp; brilliance that she put together on Canvas while pursuing her post-graduation. Somya has been working in Kiran Nadar Museum as an Art Educator since June 2014. She has designed numerous educational programmes based on the Museum collection.
Dr. Manjiri Thakoor, Art Historian, Independent Art Curator
Dr. Thakoor has been deputy curator at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, former Head of Department of Fine Art at Rachana Sansad Academy, Mumbai and is currently a committee member at the Asiatic Society. She also teaches at the J J School of Art and St Xaviers. She has worked on several international projects including the Victoria and Albert Museum. Manjiri is currently conducting a visual narrative project with children from tribal schools in the foothills of the Himalayas.
24th November 2021
Wednesday
Creating Community Through Art
Ita Mehrotra, Director, Artreach
Ita led Khel Mel workshops with Artreach in 2014-15, managed the hugely successful first Artreach Festival at Bikaner House, Delhi in 2017, and has been heading programmes at Artreach since then. Trained in visual art, art history and philosophy, Ita has worked with numerous social development and art institutions across the country, such as Khoj, Pravah, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan among others. Her own non-fiction graphic stories have been published by thewire.in, Zubaan, Goethe Institute, Yoda Press and others. She has an MPhil from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU.
Blaise Joseph, Artist and Program Director, Art By Children, Kochi Binnale Foundation
Blaise Joseph, Program Manager Art by Children, Kochi Biennale Foundation, a student of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit) in Patna, inspired by the arts, joined the famed Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda. As a Jesuit scholastic and a student of Art he used to engage with an indigenous community in Bihar, the Muzahars, who were one of the most oppressed, illiterate and landless labourers in the region. This led him to his real calling, to understand creativity and learning by taking up art based engagements with children as well as adults of the less fortunate, marginalised communities in society.
25th November 2021
Thursday
For The Love of Art
Diana Satish, Head of Department, Kids Central
Diana Shatish is a passionate educator with 20 years of experience in Art education for elementary and middle school level. She has a Masters degree in Sociology, Diploma in drawing and painting, and a diploma in visual arts specializing in ceramics from Kalakshetra . She started her teaching career at the American international school Chennai at 23 years old. Diana is passionate about bringing communities together through Art and has been successfully working with the children of Bihar for the past 10 years showing them the importance of Art education and possibilities of bringing changes in their own homes and their own communities through art. She is the Co-Founder for “Little Big Mouths “arts debate association. Diana was the runner up 2018 for ‘Art Teaching Techniques’ and 2019 winner for “art for social change” Art Teacher Excellence Award.
Vidya Shivadas, Director, FICA
Vidya Shivadas is a curator based in New Delhi. She completed her Masters in Art Criticism from Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Vadodara in 2000. She worked for more than a decade at the Vadehra Art Gallery before taking on the role of FICA Director in 2011. She has curated a number of exhibitions at the Vadehra Art Gallery since 2002 as well as guest curated exhibitions at Devi Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Edinburgh Art Festival and Serendipity Arts Festival. In 2007, she was invited to participate in the educational programming for Documenta 12 from May to September 2007 in Kassel, Germany. In 2009, she received the Asian Art Archive’s Research Grant for her research on the development of art critics in India from post-independence period to the present
Nilanjana Nandy, Painter
Nilanjana Nandy has trained as a painter. Using drawings, site specific interventions, performative exercises, participatory processes and community engagement her work deliberates around the personal and the political. She has a MA (Painting) from Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda. She has been a part of artist in residence programs such as Black Box Project, Khoj Studios (2006), Equilibrium-Sandarbh (2014) & Pepper House Residency, Kochi Muziris Biennale (2018). She has received scholarships from Pont-Aven School of Art, France (2002), Junior Fellowship from Ministry of HRD (2011) & National Scholarship, Lalit Kala Akademi (2013). She has received grant for her project IN-BETWEEN as part of Exhibition Proposal Contest by Korean Cultural Centre, New Delhi (2017). Her project COVER-UNCOVER was part of Five Million Incidents supported by Goethe Institut & Raqs Media Collective (2020). Her work was presented in exhibitions like Sarai Reader 09 (2013), Bartered Collections by Mumbai Art Room & CONA (2015) & Critical Constellations by FICA (2019). She actively collaborates with FICA for their Art for Children Program, Artreach India & NGMA, Delhi for the museum outreach programme.
1st December 2021
Wednesday
Art For Emotional Wellbeing
Jigyasa Labroo, Co-Founder and CEO of Slam-Out-Loud, Delhi
Jigyasa taught for two years in the Teach For India Fellowship and then joined their team designing and piloting learning experiences to build a culture of student leadership. She leads Slam Out Loud that uses art forms like storytelling, theatre, spoken word, and visual arts to build skills of creative confidence in disadvantaged children, reaching out via SMS lessons to 4.7million children across 4 states in India.
Sriram V Ayer, Founder & CEO, NalandaWay Foundation
Sriram founded the award-winning NGO, NalandaWay Foundation, out of his deep passion to spread hope and joy, especially to the disadvantaged child out there, through the power of the arts. Some of the achievements that he has to his credit are – being named as one of the top 50 social entrepreneurs in India, by the Outlook Business Magazine; an award from the World Bank’s Development Marketplace; “Architect of the future” Award by Waldzell Institute; Millennium Award by FICCI/USAID; Being a “Key Partner” to the Singapore International Foundation; An Ashoka Fellow; sitting in on the Advisory Committee of Dakshinachitra Museum in Chennai and so much more. Sriram is an avid writer, a mesmerizing storyteller and has a strong sense of purpose and compassion, which permeates down to every life that he touches, and all the work that he initiates.
2nd December 2021
Thursday
Critical Thinking Through a Creative Lens
Gayatri Nair, founding Trustee & heads CPB Prism
Gayatri is a trained engineer, a photographer, an arts manager, and an educator. She had over 7 years of international experience with a leading bank in network infrastructure and business management before she built a 10-year career in the arts. She is currently the founding Trustee of the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation as well as heads CPB Prism – the children’s education wing of the Foundation. She was awarded the ARThink South Asia Fellowship in 2019 which enabled her to work in Germany at the Biennale für Aktuelle fotografie.
Her passion for working with children and education led her to build and grow CPB Prism where she works directly with administrators, teachers, and students to bring visual art learning into curriculums. CPB Prism has spent over 800 hours teaching photography to over 1000+ students since its launch two years ago. Students are taught the basics of digital photography and editing using phones which are more accessible than ever before. The resulting works made by a very diverse student body have been exhibited in the Government Museum, on the Chennai beach, a mall, and other urban spaces. The education program continues to grow and evolve with the Chennai Photo Biennale.
Margaret Carsello, Head of department, American International School Chennai
Margaret Carsello is an interdisciplinary artist and educator with a focus on contemporary art and digital media. She currently teaches and is the head of the department at The American International School in Chennai. Prior to working as an international teacher she taught at the Chicago Academy for the Arts High School and in the First Year Contemporary Practices program at the renowned Art Institute of Chicago in higher education. She has successfully mentored students in the IBDP Visual Arts program and for the last six years has worked as an IB Examiner. Margaret received an MFA from Vermont College in Contemporary Art Practices, a MA in Art and Critical Theory from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Teachers Certification in Visual Art and New Media, and a BFA in Design and Visual Communication. Margaret’s work has been featured by Adobe, Communication Arts, and Step by Step Magazine.
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