Shivakka P Kuravatti

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will engage fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students of Government Higher Primary School in Yadavagiri, Mysore district with the stories and traditional practices of a local rag picker community and a migrant community located near the school. Students will understand and document these stories through Hejjemela, a folk dance form, and connect it to their mathematics and language curriculum. Shivakka will be the Coordinator for this project. 

Shivakka is a theatre practitioner working with several theatre groups across Karnataka. She has pursued Diploma in Theatre Arts from Sri Shivakumara Ranga Prayoga Shale, Sanehalli. She has been actively participating in the panel discussions and lecture sessions organised by Rangayana, Mysore. She has conducted many theatre workshops for students in the past. Given her experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

Shivakka had applied last year to work with Hejjemela. However, due to the lack of information in the proposal and the narrow scope of the project, it was decided by the internal team consisting of the Executive Director and the Programme Staff to move it to this year post development. With help from the Assistant Programme Officer Shivakka has developed this project engaging the fifth, sixth and seventh grade students of Government Higher Primary School in Yadavagiri, Mysore district. This project focuses on bringing community knowledge into the classroom learning context - which has been one of the main objectives of the Arts Education programme at IFA. Shivakka along with her students will attempt to engage with the stories and traditional practices of the rag picker community and a migrant community located near their school in Yadavagiri. 

Shivakka has been working with this community from the past two years and noticed that their cultural practices have great artistic aesthetics. For instance, the duragamurugi practice has many artistic elements such as face painting, mask making, colourful attire, and dance movements attached to it. This project will involve students to observe and understand these practices of the communities. Alongside this, she will teach Hejjemela to teachers and students through which thr project will document the stories and songs of the communities. 

Students will be divided into groups to work with the two communities. While the group one will interview rag pickers, the other group will engage with the migrant community. Both the groups will collect songs and stories. Every Saturday there will be a sharing of knowledge session in the school premise. Shivakka will be inviting resource persons from theatre, folklore, and literature to conduct workshops for students. She is also planning to setup a permanent cultural club in the school that will be led by the teachers for future arts integration activities.

The above mentioned activities will be connected to their mathematics and the language curriculum. Students will explore new possibilities of learning mathematics with Hejjemela and they will have a writing workshop on topics from their Kannada language curriculum. At the end of the project, they will collate all their stories into a theatre script and perform it in the presence of teachers, parents and the community members. 

The outcome of this project will be a performance. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will include still and video documentation of the process and the performance.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Education programme in the manner in which it attempts to connect students and schools to the cultural knowledge of the regions they inhabit and communities they live in.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.