Ganapathi Hoblidhar

Ganapathi is an Assistant Teacher at the Government Higher Primary School, Byndoor. He is one of IFA’s previous teachers from Udupi district who had received a grant. As an experienced Cluster Resource Person for the district, during his earlier programme with IFA, he had successfully advocated the need for arts education in several schools in the district. He had also transformed the cluster resource centre into a hub for local arts and folk cultures making it a space for stimulating art workshops and performances for students, teachers and the community.

His new project intends to engage students who have migrated from Maharashtra and are pursuing education in the school where he teaches. Migrant students are disadvantaged in terms of which school they are enrolled in, the duration of attending their school, and indicators of achievement. Their drop-out rates are also high. Their parents who are daily wage earners can only visit the school if they have leave from work.   

This programme confronts these challenges faced by the migrant students through two initiatives. The first is the studying and learning of the Yakshagana performance art form and poetry for language enrichment. This initiative is put together for the students of fourth to sixth standards, many of whom are considered ‘low achievers’. The second attempt is to enable students to study theme based inspirational artistic works that include dance, music, drama and visual arts. This initiative is put together for students from the eighth and ninth standards. He also introduces them to a variety of arts techniques to explore their inner realities and express them creatively. By the end of the grant period students will present many renderings of different art forms in a festival organised by the school for the community. The deliverables of the project to IFA will be images and audio-video documentation of the programmes. 

This grant was made possible with support from Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and Citi India.