When I first visited some of the underprivileged schools in my mother¹s hometown of Mussoorie, India, I was confronted with a troubling scenario: the teacher-student ratio at the government primary schools was 1 to 41. One exhausted teacher with only several textbooks sat her class in a dark room and told them to read silently. In the classrooms, girls were underrepresented and many who did attend were painfully reticent. Similarly, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds tended to suffer from high rates of absenteeism and the low levels of classroom participation. While corrupt oversight, inadequate financing, and ingrained prejudices threaten equity in Mussoorie education, I saw local NGOs and some passionate teachers fighting to compensate. It was clear that what was lacking in these schools was certainly not intelligence but personal attention, community involvement, and inspiration.

In my conversations with teachers, NGO heads, students and local artists, I would hear repeatedly that Mussoorie had “lost its culture to tourism”. Many said that education did not feel relevant or connected to daily life. It was increasingly clear that fostering cultural pride in local art forms could be connected to encouraging involvement in the school. Local artists striving to get by could be supported, and given tools to help enhance lesson plans, encourage participation from girls and minority students, and cultivate local art forms in schools. When I brought up the still inchoate idea with my peers at school, I was overwhelmed with the enthusiasm it garnered. 100 students applied to work on the project, and I chose 11 who had exceptional sensitivity to cultural difference. Last summer we traveled together to Mussoorie to work in the arts with over 200 children in six underprivileged schools. By embracing a broad definition of art, which considered the ritual protection provided by rice powder rangolis and the religious stories embedded in Gharwali dance equally as art, we began to develop a method of looking at these art forms to examine community issues. First we researched the different artistic forms, broadly defined, in the community. Then we provided the materials necessary for these artworks, letting the children create anything they wanted with them. They would change the lyrics of an old song, or add Bollywood dance to a traditional play. Christian children would use materials that for years had been employed in making conventional miniature Hindu shrines to create nativity scenes. By always asking why the kids chose different approaches, we engaged the process of their art-making directly.

Teachers in the community said that they had never seen the children so energized. By the end of our time with the Kozi school, the children were not just sitting in a silent room and reading, but actually enacting lessons from their texts, using rangolis to celebrate their school, and Gharwali traditional song to address equity in education. Even beyond our work with them, girls were speaking up more in class and attending school with greater regularity. For our final projects, we brought parents, teachers, NGO heads and community leaders to watch their work.

One group of 30 children in the Mussoorie Public Girls School (ages 14 to 16) used theater and sari costumes to explore issues of gender discrimination in their school environment, putting their show on before the whole school and the wider Mussoorie community. Hindu, Muslim and Christian children reclaimed a vacant, post-partition Muslim home using symbols in painting to open the building to all religious faiths. Using clay and cow dung, we made sculptures with the children about deforestation in their subsistence community.

The children have since formed a social action group called Prakrati (“Nature”), which uses the arts to confront social issues and develop practical means of action. Their model is being emulated by neighboring villages.

In the future, we hope to develop more flexible “process plans” that will spur sustainable groups like Prakrati. We will continue to research and work this summer, bringing another team to Mussoorie. We hope to foster more links with NGOs and local art schools and colonies to create lasting networks of public service opportunities. This coming summer, we are also initiating a new project in Masiye, Zimbabwe, under the guidance of an Aina alum, Proud Dzambukira. The Zimbabwe group will also work with a similar focus on cultivating an indigenously engineered arts education project curriculum. Establishing Aina in India has been an inspiring experience for me personally. Without a dime in our pockets and only an aspiration, we were able to mobilize great support in our communities both in India and America. Refining the project¹s ambitions has been a significant challenge; Aina is still very young and is trying to find its place and define its core competencies. It has been wonderful to learn about Pioneers of Change and other groups that recognize the capacity of the arts to contribute to community development. I did not realize originally how many people are engaged in this work around the world, and it has been so important for Aina to meet with others engaged in similar practices. Several pieces of advice that Proud and I feel would benefit others who want to use the arts to contribute to communities globally are: 1) others are doing similar work, learn from them, 2) don¹t wait for funding or be held back because of it, there are ways to make due with less, 3) the resources necessary for success already exist, they just need to be cultivated and supported, 4) don't leave this work for others, get involved however you can be beneficial.

Proud Dzambukira is bringing the project to Zimbabwe this year. He proved vital in establishing Aina in India last year and is using his networks in his home country to establish the project there. In Zimbabwe Aina Arts will partner with an established performance arts group called CHIPAWO and other artists to work with counselors at Masiye Camp to develop a cohesive and sustainable arts program to complement existing programs at the camp. Masiye Camp offers psycho-social support, confidence building and life-skills training to children who have been orphaned by AIDS as a way of enhancing their coping mechanisms and healing. Aina will also work with local artists at schools in the local community to incorporate art into the educational experiences of the children, in line with Masiye Camp¹s current drive to develop community support structures for vulnerable children. Our work at the schools will be a framework for the other communities in Zimbabwe where Masiye is developing follow-up support mechanisms.

www.AinaArts.org

e-mail Amar C. Bakshi

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