Balappa Irappa Chinagudi

Balappa Irappa Chinagudi is a Teacher at the Government Higher Primary School, (Kannada medium), Sangreshakoppa, Belagavi District. His participation in arts integrated master resource training programme conducted by IFA last year, prompted him to apply for this project. With the idea that museums and collections make influential alternative learning environments, Chinagudi will use museum objects as well as coins and currency to create awareness about the socio-economical, historical and cultural issues that are studied in the school curriculum.  

Organising his sixth grade students into a variety of engagements, Chinagudi will steer them towards understanding their world and their social studies curriculum through museum objects and currency collections. He will encourage them to gather knowledge and information about the coins and currencies and their relationship to local ruling dynasties of the Belagavi district that they study in school. Later, with the help of external resources and from the series of workshops and museum visits, he will prompt his students towards research based interventions that will include the making of an exhibition based on their learning. Alongside these activities, Chinagudi will arrange cluster level exhibitions for teachers and students, where he will invite resource persons to work with students and teachers to create a platform for dialogue. The project will offer contextualised learning experience for the students connecting themes of currency, trade and history of local legacies through the study of objects. Balappa believes that this will enable a deeper understanding of the local history.

The deliverables of the project to IFA together with reports will include audio-visual documentation of the workshops, images, and a ten to twelve minute video document of the entire project.  

This grant was made possible with support from Citi India.