R Durga

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA engages fourth and fifth grade students of the Government Lower Primary School in Paparajanahalli village, Kolar taluk, Kolar district, with the project titled Nela Gurutu, Nudi Gurutu (Markers of Land and Voice). This project connects to the curriculum in Environmental Studies (EVS), Kannada language and Social Science through an exploration of the cultural geography of their village through theatre, songs and storytelling. R Durga is the Coordinator for this project. 

R Durga is a theatre practitioner and singer from Kolar district. She has performed in fifteen plays, including Ekalavya, Nannajja, Gangamma Neernaga Jedehenithavle, Gadegurrakka, and Sonnada Sutthu. For the past decade, she has been working with children in government primary schools across Kolar district in association with Buddideepa Trust, a cultural initiative founded by the renowned poet and playwright Kotiganahalli Ramaiah. Durga has also been the voice for K. Ramaiah’s poems and songs on resistance and Dalit identity, and has performed them across Karnataka for the last seven years. Given her extensive experience in the region, she is well placed to serve as the Project Coordinator for this Foundation Project of IFA.

Children in rural Karnataka carry a deep but largely unrecognised knowledge of the environments in which they live. They know the names of grasses, the stories behind shrines, the songs their grandmothers sing during harvests, and the myths associated with rocks, trees, and water sources. Yet, very little of this knowledge finds a place in their formal schooling. Exploring these regional stories through an artistic intervention can provide children with new ways of expressing their findings and engaging with their surroundings in innovative ways.

Kolar district is located about seventy kilometres east of Bengaluru. It is a dry, rocky region with no perennial rivers and has historically been sustained by a vast network of interconnected irrigation tanks built and maintained by farming communities over centuries. That system is now in decline: tanks have silted up, borewells are being drilled deeper every year, and scrublands have been cleared for eucalyptus plantations. Alongside this ecological loss, something else has also begun to disappear. Children growing up in these villages have increasingly little living connection with the land around them. The stories, songs, names of plants and animals, and myths that once tied communities to their surroundings have been pushed out of schools and out of the everyday language of young learners. Through this project, therefore, students will explore the learning possibilities embedded in their land and language. 

Nela Gurutu, Nudi Gurutu (Markers of Land and Voice) is envisioned as a project that engages fourth and fifth grade students of the Government Lower Primary School in Paparajanahalli village with the cultural geography of their village through theatre, songs, and storytelling. Nela Gurutu refers to the physical features around a village that hold meaning for the community: shrines, old trees, rocks, tank bunds, groves, crossroads, and other sites that exist outside official or State-recognised landmarks. Nudi Gurutu, on the other hand, refers to the oral stories, songs, myths, and proverbs that give life and meaning to these places. Together, they form a map of the village’s cultural geography—one that exists in the knowledge and memory of the community and the region. Therefore, one of the major objectives of the project is to bring parents, grandparents, and community elders into the learning process as knowledge holders. This will create an exchange between generations that strengthens both the students’ understanding and the community’s sense of ownership over its cultural heritage.

The project has been divided into four stages, Stage One – Getting to Know the Ground will consist of preliminary sessions with students and teachers to trigger their curiosity and encourage them to explore stories, songs, and place-based knowledge. The students will also be encouraged to connect their findings to their curriculum in EVS, Kannada, and Social Science. Stage Two – Exploring and Creating will be the creative phase of the project. Activities will involve giving students questions or prompts such as, “Go home and ask your grandmother about the story of the village tank,” or “Find three plants near your house and learn their names from your family.” The students will go out, ask questions, listen, and observe. In the following sessions, they will bring back what they have discovered, and the material will be explored through different art forms: drawing the plants, acting out a story, composing a simple song, or creating a map of the village with its Nela Gurutu marked on it. During this stage, local community members will be invited as resource persons to share their knowledge with the students.

Stage Three – Putting It Together will focus on consolidating the students’ work. Their drawings, maps, songs, short plays, and written pieces will be gathered, refined, and prepared for sharing. The Project Coordinator will work with the students to rehearse two or three short performances, each drawing on the Nela Gurutu and Nudi Gurutu they have uncovered. The scripts will be simple, written by the students in spoken Kannada, and designed in a way that allows future classes to perform them as well. The students will also compile the illustrated materials, songs, and stories into a set of classroom resources in Kannada that teachers can continue to use with future batches of students. In Stage Four – Sharing and Handing Over, students will perform their plays and songs for the school community. This will not be a polished stage production but a sharing of what they have discovered and created, in the spirit of celebration and recognition. The illustrated materials and collection of songs and stories will be presented to the school as resources that belong to the school community. The Project Coordinator will also spend time with the teachers, taking them through the methods and materials developed during the project, so that they feel equipped to continue using arts-based approaches to connect the curriculum with local knowledge even after the project ends.

Renowned resource persons from the region will be invited during the course of the project, and students will have interactive sessions with them. All the materials generated during the project will culminate in a small exhibition in the school premises, followed by a series of performances and the publication of the collected works. 

The outcome of the project will be a publication, an exhibition, and a series of performances in the presence of school staff and community members. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will include a copy of the publication, photographs and video documentation of the entire project.  

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Education programme in the manner in which it attempts to connect students and schools to the cultural knowledge of the regions they inhabit and communities they live in. 

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.