Making with Children 20250117
Date: 2025 January 17,24
Place: Sri Aurobindo Montessori House of Children, Hyderabad
Workshop as a part of Book Launch and Exhibition: Talking to Chhaya, Ahmedabad
With the magic of imagination, colours, fun, and stories, plain cloth cuttings were painted. Brushes, palms and fingers became tools. Playfully, otherwise, wasted cloth and wool transformed into beautiful unique bookmarks. The children of Sri Aurobindo Montessori House of Children worked together in the process of upcycling materials through meaningful art.
All the kids brought overwhelming excitement. They approached the task at hand with joy. While the tiny hands used everything as a medium to paint, there was a pareidolia for keen observers. One could spot a dinosaur, a tree and a flower; nuances in the shades of green and occasionally brown from mixing random colours. Coloured wool, wrapped around the palms, becoming dancing tassels within a few steps, was enticing. The coming together of the tassel and the cloth, becoming something usable in daily life created a lot of wonder. The challenge was to capture all this energy in one frame. The activity and the art – a reflection of free-spiritedness.
“The real is the ordinary, but the ordinary doesn’t mean unimportant because the ordinary is full of wonder”. – Prof. Chhaya
This workshop by the team of architects from the Center for Learning by Doing (CLD), Akarmaa; became a segment of the exhibition during the Book Launch of Transcribed lectures by Prof. Neelkanth Chhaya, at Ahmedabad, where many students prepared gifts of gratitude for sharing with all. These colourful bookmarks now adorn the pages of many books across the globe.
