Art1st Grants

The Art1st Artist-Educator Grant is awarded to the artist-educator whose practice engages with Art Pedagogy, especially in the space of (in)formal school education. The aim of the grant is to open up a space of creative and critical engagement for the artist-educators to work with a group of (art) teachers at the selected site of the school, guiding them with various approaches, methods, tools and techniques of teaching arts or art integrated teaching.

Art1st Artist Educator Grantee 2024-25

We are thrilled to announce that Dhrubajit Sarma has been awarded the Artfirst Artist Educator Grant for 2024-25. He will be closely collaborating with the Jeevan Shiksha Pahal Muskaan team in Bhopal, our partner school, and the Art1st team of mentors.

About Dhrubajit Sarma

Dhrubajit Sarma, a visual artist and educator based in Assam, India, practises art by integrating various aspects of the landscape, such as its situations, sounds, human conditions, orality, and non-human perspectives. He creates books, prints, and experimental animated videos. As a co-founder of the Anga Art Collective in 2010, he exhibited his work in numerous shows, including the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh in 2022 and "Very Small Feelings" at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, India, in 2023. Additionally, he curated the Students' Biennale (Northeast Zone) in 2022-23 and developed the exhibition scenography for "Waral Prakalpa" at Spore Initiative in Berlin, Germany, as a collective member. The Anga Art Collective's kNOw school, a post-disciplinary platform, conducts workshops and community outreach programs. Through this platform, they aim to develop frameworks that rethink aesthetics, pedagogy, and ways of life in the context of today’s multi-layered socio-economic, political, ecological, and academic-institutional crises.

Proposal

The "Season as School" concept is a response to the historic moment in the shifting interrelationship of nature, humans, and seasonality. It revolves around placing the season at the core and adapting our understanding of art and its implications based on the ongoing changes of seasonality. These concepts and ideas will be explored as part of the year-long engagement by developing such a curriculum and through workshops with the educators of Muskaan school. The students would be engaged and encouraged to create a series of works that capture specific aspects of seasonal changes or document various features and events across different seasons to set up a Seasons Library at the school.

Partner School

Jeevan Shiksha Pahal - school was started by Muskaan (Bhopal) to channelize the restlessness around what the conventional education system was offering. They wanted to implement a model that was relevant and meaningful for marginalised communities, where the children could feel reassured and confident, and take pride in their identity. It is important that while they learn and take the world's knowledge, they also examine the social structures around us critically. For Muskaan, education is as much about the person's personal growth as it is about an external certification, so emotional well-being, exploring yourself through art and other forms are necessary elements in the curriculum.

The Art1st Educator Grant was awarded to Kripa for the year 2023-24.

About Kripa

Kripa is an illustrator and writer based in Mumbai. The characters in her books are real people derived from her association with the grassroots. Her art is rooted in her engagement with her city Mumbai, it’s children, people and their problems. She is committed to making books accessible to children from all walks of life by helping communities set up libraries. Kripa took up teaching Art and Design after completing Fine Art from Sir JJ school of Art. She has been an Art educator for over 19 years, and worked with institutions like Srishti school of Art design and technology and is currently working with Ecole Intuit Lab.

Engagement with Har Mandir Primary School, Coorg, Karnataka

Kripa engaged with teachers from Har Mandir Primary School in Madikeri, Kodagu, Karnataka which is a free part-residential school rooted in the local traditions and ecosystem for underprivileged children. The program comprised two phases. In the first, teachers explored themes like caste discrimination and gender biases and also had interactive sessions integrating art with subjects like Maths and Science. It included a six-day onsite visit and monthly online sessions. The second phase, focusing on water, involved collaborative design with teachers and a six-day physical visit, supplemented by online sessions. Activities included exploring the River Kaveri, gathering stories, observing biodiversity, and interviewing experts.

Through the program, we have managed to achieve some meaningful collaborations with environmental organisations in Coorg such as Coorg Wildlife Society and create some Social impact by reaching out to media people, activists and artists thus inviting them to the school to meet the children as well as enable children to create posters for various causes. Her method has been a disruptive pedagogical intervention by enabling counterintuitive approaches and unlearning strategies.