Staying Connected #14 | Children and The Arts | December 17, 2020

Think back to your earliest memory of creating art as a child. When you discovered crayons and filled your notebooks with houses, flowers, birds and animals? Or in your school when you learnt a dance or song to perform at a school annual day? Or was it when you were asked to read out loud a poem, play or story in a literature class?

The Arts Education programme at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), called Kali Kalisu, (‘Learn and Teach’ in Kannada) focusses on integrating arts with the curriculum in government schools in Karnataka and beyond. It attempts to achieve this objective through grants made to artists and teachers; and facilitating training workshops for teachers and administrators.

Today, under the Staying Connected Series by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), we bring you three editions of the Hejjegalu ('Footsteps' in Kannada), an annual publication reflecting on the significant impact and reach of the Kali Kalisu programme and a conversation with Savita Uday and Antara Mukherjee from Buda Folklore about their project supported under the same programme.

Hejjegalu

An annual publication in Kannada supported under the Kali Kalisu programme of IFA, featuring grantees and their projects and the larger story of arts education in India. This document is a vital resource and document for key persons and organisations in the field of Education in Karnataka – teachers, art educators, and policy makers. Click here to browse through Hejjegalu 2016-2017 co-edited by teachers and IFA Arts Education grantees Kaladhar S and Sadananda Byndoor, and designed by Kaladhar S, 2017-2018 co-edited by Nagaraj Hudeda and Chitra V, with Kaladhar S continuing as the designer, 2018-2019 co-edited by Kotresh B and Ningu Solagi and designed by Ningu Solangi, and get a sense of Kali Kalisu projects supported in these years, accompanied with rich illustrations!

While the first edition of the Hejjegalu was supported by Citi India, the second and third editions have been supported by the Singhal Iyer Family Foundation (SIFF).

Folklore and Oral Traditions in Classrooms: Savita Uday in conversation with Krishna Murthy TN

A conversation organised by IFA under its Throwback Thursdays with IFA series with Savita Uday and Antara Mukherjee from a not-for-profit organisation called Buda Folklore located in the Uttara Kannada region in Karnataka. They were in conversation with Krishna Murthy TN, Programme Officer, Arts Education, IFA. Savita and Antara have been working alongside the members of the tribal communities that reside in the Gokarna-Ankola region, Uttara Kannada, to document and revitalise the wealth of songs and stories that are part of their oral tradition. The project supported by IFA enabled her to extend this work by involving the students and teachers of the fifth, sixth and seventh standards of a Government Primary School located in the region. Click here to tune in and learn more about the project and their work! 

Savita Uday received a grant from IFA, under the Arts Education programme made possible with support from Citi India in 2017.