A project had germinated through late night discussions with volunteers: involve the children in decorating their school, through a medium that they could touch and feel. The whole idea was to involve everyone, explore the creative ability of the children, and their appetite for such activities, and bring a nice touch of color and fun to the Blind School in Gandhinagar.
I was a bit scared about such a project: both really hands on and somewhat artistic, trying to take everyone on a journey beyond the language barrier...
It was a journey alright and a beautiful one as you can discover in the pictures below! long discussions with volunteers who had lots of ideas but were for the most part too busy with their own beautiful projects (building pre-schools etc); broken English and broken Gujarati talks at the Blind School reaching to different degree of comprehension, or incomprehension! ; getting lots of input and feedback on the design, the most critical one being to ask the children what they wanted; and then getting started, step by step, without being 100% sure of where it was going and or what help I would get.
The beauty of it is that it eventually seem to happen by magic: people would give me advice and I would simply put them in practice, volunteers would show up unexpectedly when I most needed them, or I would start to remove the old paint with almost my bare hands and someone would come up with a much more efficient solution, and the kids would simply love touching and experimenting whatever we would be sticking or doing to the wall, the staff would throw me big smiles or ask questions and touch the wall, developing further an understanding of what we were trying to achieve.
So all in all, it was a real collective effort and delivery: with blind and partially sighted children playing a key role at each stage, the staff being enthusiastic and providing whatever was missing, volunteers who came once or many times (especially Aparna, who was also dedicated to that project for a whole month and helped tremendously with her language skills and sweetness!), others who were coaching me on the process making sure the focus was still there, the 3 women artists who came and did the mudwork, learning to involve the children, Jaggatbhai who gave so much advice, Brinda, who was determined that the children should own the wall!
Enough words, enjoy the pictures below and the small video!
I was a bit scared about such a project: both really hands on and somewhat artistic, trying to take everyone on a journey beyond the language barrier...
It was a journey alright and a beautiful one as you can discover in the pictures below! long discussions with volunteers who had lots of ideas but were for the most part too busy with their own beautiful projects (building pre-schools etc); broken English and broken Gujarati talks at the Blind School reaching to different degree of comprehension, or incomprehension! ; getting lots of input and feedback on the design, the most critical one being to ask the children what they wanted; and then getting started, step by step, without being 100% sure of where it was going and or what help I would get.
The beauty of it is that it eventually seem to happen by magic: people would give me advice and I would simply put them in practice, volunteers would show up unexpectedly when I most needed them, or I would start to remove the old paint with almost my bare hands and someone would come up with a much more efficient solution, and the kids would simply love touching and experimenting whatever we would be sticking or doing to the wall, the staff would throw me big smiles or ask questions and touch the wall, developing further an understanding of what we were trying to achieve.
So all in all, it was a real collective effort and delivery: with blind and partially sighted children playing a key role at each stage, the staff being enthusiastic and providing whatever was missing, volunteers who came once or many times (especially Aparna, who was also dedicated to that project for a whole month and helped tremendously with her language skills and sweetness!), others who were coaching me on the process making sure the focus was still there, the 3 women artists who came and did the mudwork, learning to involve the children, Jaggatbhai who gave so much advice, Brinda, who was determined that the children should own the wall!
Enough words, enjoy the pictures below and the small video!
| Album: Blind School Mural |
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