Teach Art

Asking Tribal kids being vocationally trained in construction sector skills to learn sketching and drawing is quite comparable to music lessons for soldiers during a war. Not only this additional activity should help alleviate an individual's stress while learning it might also help in winning over enemies or clients when in the field.

I am always a proponent of the thought that the power of imagination is theoretically boundless and even a little of it which can be converted into action has always been exciting for mankind.

So, here at the Vocational Training Centre at Dahod, I initiated some drawing classes. The students who come here at the centre are tribal youth from Gujarat, mainly Dahod district, and spend about forty five days in residence here to get introduced to construction skills such as masonry, bar bending, plumbing, site supervision and carpentery. I was very much supported and encouraged by all my colleagues here at GVT and GIZ  to undertake this; the aim being:

1. Make students realize that skteching can be used at work to share ideas and plans with colleagues and clients
2. Foster creative thinking
3. Value creativity

During these sketching classes the methodology focussed into following rules:

1. Always draw with a pencil on a blank paper
2. To begin, break down your sketches into polygons, triangles and circles
3. Never ever copy an existing image
4. Draw a real 3D object, whether it is visible or it comes to your mind
5. Do not worry about realisticness of your drawn image
6. Let the drawing flow with your hand following your head
7. Make your image rich with your own imagination
8. Always improvise
9. Practice, practice and practice
10. Observe, observe and observe

A few selected sketches are scanned and shown here. Most of the sketches were drawn in classes and I don't think most students took any particular interest because sketching is seldom seen as an important subject in today's Indian mainstream learning. However, whatever that was attempted, somewhere in these skteches, to my luck, I found the present state of tribal living, interpretations and a few aspirations.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=107874027219736477260&target=ALBUM&id=6030679721185976449&authkey=Gv1sRgCPuFvpDY-f-zVw&feat=email&mode=SLIDESHOW